IMPLICATVRA -- in 18 volumes, vol. III

aristotelian society: London – founded, as it should, in London, by an amateur -- Grice and the Aristotelian Society – his “Causal Theory of perception” was an invited contribution, a ‘popularisation’ for this Society, which was founded in London back in the day. The Aristotelian Society’s first president was S. H. Hodgson, of Christ Church, Oxford. He was succeeded by Bernard Bosanquet.

armstrong: Grice: “pre-colonial philosopher, from the colonies.” -- d. m. “Meaning and communication,” on H. P. Grice -- philosopher of mind and metaphysician, and until his retirement Challis Professor of Philosophy at Sydney, noted for his allegiance to a physicalist account of consciousness and to a realist view of properties conceived as universals. A Materialist Theory of the Mind 8 develops a scientifically motivated version of the view that mental states are identical with physical states of the central nervous system. Universals and Scientific Realism 8 and What Is a Law of Nature? argue that a scientifically adequate ontology must include universals in order to explain the status of natural laws. Armstrong contends that laws must be construed as expressing relations of necessitation between universals rather than mere regularities among particulars. However, he is only prepared to acknowledge the existence of such universals as are required for the purposes of scientific explanation. Moreover, he adopts an “immanent” or “Aristotelian” as opposed to a “transcendent” or “Platonic” realism, refusing to accept the existence of uninstantiated universals and denying that universals somehow exist “outside” space and time. More recently, Armstrong has integrated his scientifically inspired physicalism and property realism within the overall framework of an ontology of states of affairs, notably in A World of States of Affairs. Here he advocates the truthmaker principle that every truth must be made true by some existing state of affairs and contends that states of affairs, rather than the universals and particulars that he regards as their constituents, are the basic building blocks of reality. Within this ontology, which in some ways resembles that of Vitters’s Tractatus, necessity and possibility are accommodated by appeal to combinatorial principles. As Armstrong explains in A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility, this approach offers an ontologically economical alternative to the realist conception of possible worlds defended by David Lewis. 

arnauld: “Have you ever been to Port Royale? I haven’t!” – Grice. Grice enjoyed the “Logique de Port-Royal.” Antoine: philosopher, perhaps the most important and best-known intellectual associated with the Jansenist community at Port-Royal, as well as a staunch and orthodox champion of Cartesian philosophy. His theological writings defend the Augustinian doctrine of efficacious grace, according to which salvation is not earned by one’s own acts, but granted by the irresistible grace of God. He also argues in favor of a strict contritionism, whereby one’s absolution must be based on a true, heartfelt repentance, a love of God, rather than a selfish fear of God’s punishment. These views brought him and Port-Royal to the center of religious controversy in seventeenth-century France, as Jansenism came to be perceived as a subversive extension of Protestant reform. Arnauld was also constantly engaged in philosophical disputation, and was regarded as one of the sharpest and most philosophically acute thinkers of his time. His influence on several major philosophers of the period resulted mainly from his penetrating criticism of their systems. In 1641, Arnauld was asked to comment on Descartes’s Meditations. The objections he sent  regarding, among other topics, the representational nature of ideas, the circularity of Descartes’s proofs for the existence of God, and the apparent irreconcilability of Descartes’s conception of material substance with the Catholic doctrine of Eucharistic transubstantiation  were considered by Descartes to be the most intelligent and serious of all. Arnauld offered his objections in a constructive spirit, and soon became an enthusiastic defender of Descartes’s philosophy, regarding it as beneficial both to the advancement of human learning and to Christian piety. He insists, for example, that the immortality of the soul is well grounded in Cartesian mind body dualism. In 1662, Arnauld composed with Pierre Nicole the Port-Royal Logic, an influential treatise on language and reasoning. After several decades of theological polemic, during which he fled France to the Netherlands, Arnauld resumed his public philosophical activities with the publication in 1683 of On True and False Ideas and in 1685 of Philosophical and Theological Reflections on the New System of Nature and Grace. These two works, opening salvos in what would become a long debate, constitute a detailed attack on Malebranche’s theology and its philosophical foundations. In the first, mainly philosophical treatise, Arnauld insists that ideas, or the mental representations that mediate human knowledge, are nothing but acts of the mind that put us in direct cognitive and perceptual contact with things in the world. Malebranche, as Arnauld reads him, argues that ideas are immaterial but nonmental objects in God’s understanding that we know and perceive instead of physical things. Thus, the debate is often characterized as between Arnauld’s direct realism and Malebranche’s representative theory. Such mental acts also have representational content, or what Arnauld following Descartes calls “objective reality.” This content explains the act’s intentionality, or directedness toward an object. Arnauld would later argue with Pierre Bayle, who came to Malebranche’s defense, over whether all mental phenomena have intentionality, as Arnauld believes, or, as Bayle asserts, certain events in the soul e.g., pleasures and pains are non-intentional. This initial critique of Malebranche’s epistemology and philosophy of mind, however, was intended by Arnauld only as a prolegomenon to the more important attack on his theology; in particular, on Malebranche’s claim that God always acts by general volitions and never by particular volitions. This view, Arnauld argues, undermines the true Catholic system of divine providence and threatens the efficacy of God’s will by removing God from direct governance of the world. In 1686, Arnauld also entered into discussions with Leibniz regarding the latter’s Discourse on Metaphysics. In the ensuing correspondence, Arnauld focuses his critique on Leibniz’s concept of substance and on his causal theory, the preestablished harmony. In this exchange, like the one with Malebranche, Arnauld is concerned to preserve what he takes to be the proper way to conceive of God’s freedom and providence; although his remarks on substance in which he objects to Leibniz’s reintroduction of “substantial forms” is also clearly motivated by his commitment to a strict Cartesian ontology  bodies are nothing more than extension, devoid of any spiritual element. Most of his philosophical activity in the latter half of the century, in fact, is a vigorous defense of Cartesianism, particularly on theological grounds e.g., demonstrating the consistency between Cartesian metaphysics and the Catholic dogma of real presence in the Eucharist, as it became the object of condemnation in both Catholic and Protestant circles.

atomism: the theory, originated by Leucippus and elaborated by Democritus, that the ultimate realities are atoms and the void. The theory was later used by Epicurus as the foundation for a philosophy stressing ethical concerns, Epicureanism. 

arrow’s paradox – discussed by Grice in “Conversational reason.” Also called Arrow’s impossibility theorem, a major result in social choice theory, named for its discoverer, economist Kenneth Arrow. It is intuitive to suppose that the preferences of individuals in a society can be expressed formally, and then aggregated into an expression of social preferences, a social choice function. Arrow’s paradox is that individual preferences having certain well-behaved formalizations demonstrably cannot be aggregated into a similarly well-behaved social choice function satisfying four plausible formal conditions: 1 collective rationality  any set of individual orderings and alternatives must yield a social ordering; 2 Pareto optimality  if all individuals prefer one ordering to another, the social ordering must also agree; 3 non-dictatorship  the social ordering must not be identical to a particular individual’s ordering; and 4 independence of irrelevant alternatives  the social ordering depends on no properties of the individual orderings other than the orders themselves, and for a given set of alternatives it depends only on the orderings of those particular alternatives. Most attempts to resolve the paradox have focused on aspects of 1 and 4. Some argue that preferences can be rational even if they are intransitive. Others argue that cardinal orderings, and hence, interpersonal comparisons of preference intensity, are relevant. 

ascriptum: ascriptivism, the theory that to call an action voluntary is not to describe it as caused in a certain way by the agent who did it, but to express a commitment to hold the agent responsible for the action. Ascriptivism is thus a kind of noncognitivism as applied to judgments about the voluntariness of acts. Introduced by Hart in “Ascription of Rights and Responsibilities,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 9, ascriptivism was given its name and attacked in Geach’s “Ascriptivism,” Philosophical Review 0. Hart recanted in the Preface to his Punishment and Responsibility.

associatum -- associationism: discussed by Grice as an example of a propositional complexum -- the psychological doctrine that association is the sole or primary basis of learning as well as of intelligent thought and behavior. Association occurs when one type of thought, idea, or behavior follows, or is contingent upon, another thought, idea, or behavior or external event, and the second somehow bonds with the first. If the idea of eggs is paired with the idea of ham, then the two ideas may become associated. Associationists argue that complex states of mind and mental processes can be analyzed into associated elements. The complex may be novel, but the elements are products of past associations. Associationism often is combined with hedonism. Hedonism explains why events associate or bond: bonds are forged by pleasant experiences. If the pleasantness of eating eggs is combined with the pleasantness of eating ham, then ideas of ham and eggs associate. Bonding may also be explained by various non-hedonistic principles of association, as in Hume’s theory of the association of ideas. One of these principles is contiguity in place or time. Associationism contributes to the componential analysis of intelligent, rational activity into non-intelligent, non-rational, mechanical processes. People believe as they do, not because of rational connections among beliefs, but because beliefs associatively bond. Thus one may think of London when thinking of England, not because one possesses an inner logic of geographic beliefs from which one infers that London is in England. The two thoughts may co-occur because of contiguity or other principles. Kinds of associationism occur in behaviorist models of classical and operant conditioning. Certain associationist ideas, if not associationism itself, appear in connectionist models of cognition, especially the principle that contiguities breed bonding. Several philosophers and psychologists, including Hume, Hartley, and J. S. Mill among philosophers and E. L. Thorndike 18749 and B. F. Skinner 490 among psychologists, are associationists. 

attenuatum – attenuated cases of communication -- Borderline – case -- degenerate case, an expression used more or less loosely to indicate an individual or class that falls outside of a given background class to which it is otherwise very closely related, often in virtue of an ordering of a more comprehensive class. A degenerate case of one class is often a limiting case of a more comprehensive class. Rest zero velocity is a degenerate case of motion positive velocity while being a limiting case of velocity. The circle is a degenerate case of an equilateral and equiangular polygon. In technical or scientific contexts, the conventional term for the background class is often “stretched” to cover otherwise degenerate cases. A figure composed of two intersecting lines is a degenerate case of hyperbola in the sense of synthetic geometry, but it is a limiting case of hyperbola in the sense of analytic geometry. The null set is a degenerate case of set in an older sense but a limiting case of set in a modern sense. A line segment is a degenerate case of rectangle when rectangles are ordered by ratio of length to width, but it is not a limiting case under these conditions. 

attributum: attribution theory, a theory in social psychology concerned with how and why ordinary people explain events. People explain by attributing causal powers to certain events rather than others. The theory attempts to describe and clarify everyday commonsense explanation, to identify criteria of explanatory success presupposed by common sense, and to compare and contrast commonsense explanation with scientific explanation. The heart of attribution theory is the thesis that people tend to attribute causal power to factors personally important to them, which they believe covary with alleged effects. For example, a woman may designate sexual discrimination as the cause of her not being promoted in a corporation. Being female is important to her and she believes that promotion and failure covary with gender. Males get promoted; females don’t. Causal attributions tend to preserve self-esteem, reduce cognitive dissonance, and diminish the attributor’s personal responsibility for misdeeds. When attributional styles or habits contribute to emotional ill-being, e.g. to chronic, inappropriate feelings of depression or guilt, attribution theory offers the following therapeutic recommendation: change attributions so as to reduce emotional ill-being and increase well-being. Hence if the woman blames herself for the failure, and if self-blame is part of her depressive attributional style, she would be encouraged to look outside herself, perhaps to sexual discrimination, for the explanation.

augustinus -- ugustinian semiotics -- Augustine, Saint, known as Augustine of Hippo 354430, Christian philosopher and church father, one of the chief sources of Christian thought in the West; his importance for medieval and modern European philosophy is impossible to describe briefly or ever to circumscribe. Matters are made more difficult because Augustine wrote voluminously and dialectically as a Christian theologian, treating philosophical topics for the most part only as they were helpful to theology  or as corrected by it. Augustine fashioned the narrative of the Confessions 397400 out of the events of the first half of his life. He thus supplied later biographers with both a seductive selection of biographical detail and a compelling story of his successive conversions from adolescent sensuality, to the image-laden religion of the Manichaeans, to a version of Neoplatonism, and then to Christianity. The story is an unexcelled introduction to Augustine’s views of philosophy. It shows, for instance, that Augustine received very little formal education in philosophy. He was trained as a rhetorician, and the only philosophical work that he mentions among his early reading is Cicero’s lost Hortensius, an exercise in persuasion to the study of philosophy. Again, the narrative makes plain that Augustine finally rejected Manichaeanism because he came to see it as bad philosophy: a set of sophistical fantasies without rational coherence or explanatory force. More importantly, Augustine’s final conversion to Christianity was prepared by his reading in “certain books of the Platonists” Confessions 7.9.13. These Latin translations, which seem to have been anthologies or manuals of philosophic teaching, taught Augustine a form of Neoplatonism that enabled him to conceive of a cosmic hierarchy descending from an immaterial, eternal, and intelligible God. On Augustine’s judgment, philosophy could do no more than that; it could not give him the power to order his own life so as to live happily and in a stable relation with the now-discovered God. Yet in his first years as a Christian, Augustine took time to write a number of works in philosophical genres. Best known among them are a refutation of Academic Skepticism Contra academicos, 386, a theodicy De ordine, 386, and a dialogue on the place of human choice within the providentially ordered hierarchy created by God De libero arbitrio, 388/39. Within the decade of his conversion, Augustine was drafted into the priesthood 391 and then consecrated bishop 395. The thirty-five years of his life after that consecration were consumed by labors on behalf of the church in northern Africa and through the Latin-speaking portions of the increasingly fragmented empire. Most of Augustine’s episcopal writing was polemical both in origin and in form; he composed against authors or movements he judged heretical, especially the Donatists and Pelagians. But Augustine’s sense of his authorship also led him to write works of fundamental theology conceived on a grand scale. The most famous of these works, beyond the Confessions, are On the Trinity 399412, 420, On Genesis according to the Letter 40115, and On the City of God 41326. On the Trinity elaborates in subtle detail the distinguishable “traces” of Father, Son, and Spirit in the created world and particularly in the human soul’s triad of memory, intellect, and will. The commentary on Genesis 13, which is meant to be much more than a “literal” commentary in the modern sense, treats many topics in philosophical psychology and anthropology. It also teaches such cosmological doctrines as the “seed-reasons” rationes seminales by which creatures are given intelligible form. The City of God begins with a critique of the bankruptcy of pagan civic religion and its attendant philosophies, but it ends with the depiction of human history as a combat between forces of self-love, conceived as a diabolic city of earth, and the graced love of God, which founds that heavenly city within which alone peace is possible. attributive pluralism Augustine 60   60 A number of other, discrete doctrines have been attached to Augustine, usually without the dialectical nuances he would have considered indispensable. One such doctrine concerns divine “illumination” of the human intellect, i.e., some active intervention by God in ordinary processes of human understanding. Another doctrine typically attributed to Augustine is the inability of the human will to do morally good actions without grace. A more authentically Augustinian teaching is that introspection or inwardness is the way of discovering the created hierarchies by which to ascend to God. Another authentic teaching would be that time, which is a distension of the divine “now,” serves as the medium or narrative structure for the creation’s return to God. But no list of doctrines or positions, however authentic or inauthentic, can serve as a faithful representation of Augustine’s thought, which gives itself only through the carefully wrought rhetorical forms of his texts. 

austinian: J.: discussed by Grice in his explorations on moral versus legal right. English legal philosopher known especially for his command theory of law. His career as a lawyer was unsuccessful but his reputation as a scholar was such that on the founding of  , London, he was offered the chair of jurisprudence. In 1832 he published the first ten of his lectures, compressed into six as The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. Although he published a few papers, and his somewhat fragmentary Lectures on Jurisprudence 1863 was published posthumously, it is on the Province that his reputation rests. He and Bentham his friend, London neighbor, and fellow utilitarian were the foremost English legal philosophers of their time, and their influence on the course of legal philosophy endures. Austin held that the first task of legal philosophy, one to which he bends most of his energy, is to make clear what laws are, and if possible to explain why they are what they are: their rationale. Until those matters are clear, legislative proposals and legal arguments can never be clear, since irrelevant considerations will inevitably creep in. The proper place for moral or theological considerations is in discussion of what the positive law ought to be, not of what it is. Theological considerations reduce to moral ones, since God can be assumed to be a good utilitarian. It is positive laws, “that is to say the laws which are simply and strictly so called, . . . which form the appropriate matter of general and particular jurisprudence.” They must also be distinguished from “laws metaphorical or figurative.” A law in its most general senseis “a rule laid down for the guidance of an intelligent being by an intelligent being having power over him.” It is a command, however phrased. It is the commands of men to men, of political superiors, that form the body of positive law. General or comparative jurisprudence, the source of the rationale, if any, of particular laws, is possible because there are commands nearly universal that may be attributed to God or Nature, but they become positive law only when laid down by a ruler. The general model of an Austinian analytic jurisprudence built upon a framework of definitions has been widely followed, but cogent objections, especially by Hart, have undermined the command theory of law. 

austin:  Grice: “Never to be confused with David Austin, of rosarian infame!” -- Grice referred to him as “Austin the younger,” in opposition to “Austin the elder” – (Austin never enjoyed the joke). j. l. H. P. Grice, “The Austinian Code.” English philosopher, a leading exponent of postwar “linguistic” philosophy. Educated primarily as a classicist at Shrewsbury and Balliol , Oxford, he taught philosophy at Magdalen . During World War II he served at a high level in military intelligence, which earned him the O.B.E., Croix de Guerre, and Legion of Merit. In 2 he became White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, and in 5 and 8 he held visiting appointments at Harvard and Berkeley, respectively. In his relatively brief career, Austin published only a few invited papers; his influence was exerted mainly through discussion with his colleagues, whom he dominated more by critical intelligence than by any preconceived view of what philosophy should be. Unlike some others, Austin did not believe that philosophical problems all arise out of aberrations from “ordinary language,” nor did he necessarily find solutions there; he dwelt, rather, on the authority of the vernacular as a source of nice and pregnant distinctions, and held that it deserves much closer attention than it commonly receives from philosophers. It is useless, he thought, to pontificate at large about knowledge, reality, or existence, for example, without first examining in detail how, and when, the words ‘know’, ‘real’, and ‘exist’ are employed in daily life. In Sense and Sensibilia 2; compiled from lecture notes, the sense-datum theory comes under withering fire for its failings in this respect. Austin also provoked controversy with his well-known distinction between “performative” and “constative” utterances ‘I promise’ makes a promise, whereas ‘he promised’ merely reports one; he later recast this as a threefold differentiation of locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary “forces” in utterance, corresponding roughly to the meaning, intention, and consequences of saying a thing, in one context or another. Though never very stable or fully worked out, these ideas have since found a place in the still-evolving study of speech acts. 

austinian code, The: The jocular way by Grice to refer to ‘The Master,’ whom he saw wobble on more than one occasion. Grice has mixed feelings (“or fixed meelings, if you prefer”) about Austin. Unlike Austin, Grice is a Midlands scholarship boy, and ends up in Corpus. One outcome of this, as he later reminisced is that Austin never cared to invite him to the Thursday-evenings at All Souls – “which was alright, I suppose, in that the number was appropriately restricted to seven.” But Grice confessed that he thought it was because “he had been born on the wrong side of the tracks.” After the war, Grice would join what Grice, in fun, called “the Playgroup,” which was anything BUT. Austin played the School Master, and let the kindergarten relax in the sun! One reason Grice avoided publication was the idea that Austin would criticise him. Austin never cared to recognise Grice’s “Personal Identity,” or less so, “Meaning.” He never mentioned his “Metaphysics” third programme lecture – but Austin never made it to the programme. Grice socialized very well with who will be Austin’s custodians, in alphabetical order, Urmson and Warnock – “two charmers.” Unlike Austin, Urmson and Warnock were the type of person Austin would philosophise with – and he would spend hours talking about visa with Warnock. Upon Austin’s demise, Grice kept with the ‘play group’, which really became one! Grice makes immense references to Austin. Austin fits Grice to a T, because of the ‘mistakes’ he engages in. So, it is fair to say that Grice’s motivation for the coinage of implicaturum was Austin (“He would too often ignore the distinction between what a ‘communicator’ communicates and what his expression, if anything, does.”). So Grice attempts an intention-based account of the communicator’s message. Within this message, there is ONE aspect that can usually be regarded as being of ‘philosophical interest.’ The ‘unnecessary implicaturum’ is bound to be taken Austin as part of the ‘philosophical interesting’ bit when it isn’t. So Grice is criticizing Austin for providing the wrong analysis for the wrong analysandum. Grice refers specifically to the essays in “Philosophical Papers,” notably “Other Minds” and “A Plea for Excuses.” But he makes a passing reference to “Sense and Sensibilia,” whose tone Grice dislikes, and makes a borrowing or two from the ‘illocution,’ never calling it by that name. At most, Grice would adapt Austin’s use of ‘act.’ But his rephrase is ‘conversational move.’ So Grice would say that by making a conversational ‘move,’ the conversationalist may be communicating TWO things. He spent some type finding a way to conceptualise this. He later came with the metaphor of the FIRST-FLOOR act, the MEZZANINE act, and the SECOND-FLOOR act. This applies to Fregeianisms like ‘aber,’ but it may well apply to Austinian-code type of utterances.

austinianism: Grice felt sorry for Nowell-Smith, whom he calls the ‘straight-man’ for the comedy double act with Austin at the Play Groups. “I would say ‘on principle’” – “I would say, ‘no, thanks.” “I don’t understand Donne.” “It’s perfectly clear to me.” By using Nowell-Sith, Grice is implicating that Austin had little manners in the ‘play group,’ “And I wasn’t surprised when Nowell-Smith left Oxford for good, almost.” Not quite, of course. After some time in the extremely fashionable Canterbury, Nowell-Smith returns to Oxford. Vide: nowell-smithianism.

autarkia: Grecian for ‘self-sufficiency,’ from ‘auto-‘, self, and ‘arkhe,’ principium. Autarkia was widely regarded as a mark of the human good, happiness eudaimonia. A life is self-sufficient when it is worthy of choice and lacks nothing. What makes a life self-sufficient  and thereby happy  was a matter of controversy. Stoics maintained that the mere possession of virtue would suffice; Aristotle and the Peripatetics insisted that virtue must be exercised and even, perhaps, accompanied by material goods. There was also a debate among later Grecian thinkers over whether a self-sufficient life is solitary or whether only life in a community can be self-sufficient. 

avenarius, R. philosopher: an influence on Ayer, who thinks he is following British empiricism! Avenarius was born in Paris and educated at the  of Leipzig. He became a professor at Leipzig and succeeded Windelband at the  of Zürich in 1877. For a time he was editor of the Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie. His earliest work was Über die beiden ersten Phasen des Spinozischen Pantheismus 1868. His major work, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung Critique of Pure Experience, 2 vols., 890, was followed by his last study, Der menschliche Weltbegriffe 1. In his post-Kantian Kritik Avenarius presented a radical positivism that sought to base philosophy on scientific principles. This “empirio-criticism” emphasized “pure experience” and descriptive and general definitions of experience. Metaphysical claims to transcend experience were rejected as mere creations of the mind. Like Hume, Avenarius denied the ontological validity of substance and causality. Seeking a scientific empiricism, he endeavored to delineate a descriptive determination of the form and content of pure experience. He thought that the subject-object dichotomy, the separation of inner and outer experiences, falsified reality. If we could avoid “introjecting” feeling, thought, and will into experience and thereby splitting it into subject and object, we could attain the original “natural” view of the world. Although Avenarius, in his Critique of Pure Experience, thought that changes in brain states parallel states of consciousness, he did not reduce sensations or states of consciousness to physiological changes in the brain. Because his theory of pure experience undermined dogmatic materialism, Lenin attacked his philosophy in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism 2. His epistemology influenced Mach and his emphasis upon pure experience had considerable influence on James.

awareness: an Anglo-Saxon, “sort of,” term Grice liked – for Grice, awareness means the doxastic attitude prefixed to any other state -- consciousness, a central feature of our lives that is notoriously difficult to characterize. You experience goings-on in the world, and, turning inward “introspecting”, you experience your experiencing. Objects of awareness can be external or internal. Pressing your finger on the edge of a table, you can be aware of the table’s edge, and aware of the feeling of pressure though perhaps not simultaneously. Philosophers from Locke to Nagel have insisted that our experiences have distinctive qualities: there is “something it is like” to have them. It would seem important, then, to distinguish qualities of objects of which you are aware from qualities of your awareness. Suppose you are aware of a round, red tomato. The tomato, but not your awareness, is round and red. What then are the qualities of your awareness? Here we encounter a deep puzzle that divides theorists into intransigent camps. Some materialists, like Dennett, insist that awareness lacks qualities or lacks qualities distinct from its objects: the qualities we attribute to experiences are really those of experienced objects. This opens the way to a dismissal of “phenomenal” qualities qualia, qualities that seem to have no place in the material world. Others T. Nagel, Ned Block regard such qualities as patently genuine, preferring to dismiss any theory unable to accommodate them. Convinced that the qualities of awareness are ineliminable and irreducible to respectable material properties, some philosophers, following Frank Jackson, contend they are “epiphenomenal”: real but causally inefficacious. Still others, including Searle, point to what they regard as a fundamental distinction between the “intrinsically subjective” character of awareness and the “objective,” “public” character of material objects, but deny that this yields epiphenomenalism. 

axioma – Porphyry translated this as ‘principium,’ but Grice was not too happy about it! Referred to by Grice in his portrayal of the formalists in their account of an ‘ideal’ language. He is thinking Peano, Whitehead, and Russell. – the axiomatic method, originally, a method for reorganizing the accepted propositions and concepts of an existent science in order to increase certainty in the propositions and clarity in the concepts. Application of this method was thought to require the identification of 1 the “universe of discourse” domain, genus of entities constituting the primary subject matter of the science, 2 the “primitive concepts” that can be grasped immediately without the use of definition, 3 the “primitive propositions” or “axioms”, whose truth is knowable immediately, without the use of deduction, 4 an immediately acceptable “primitive definition” in terms of primitive concepts for each non-primitive concept, and 5 a deduction constructed by chaining immediate, logically cogent inferences ultimately from primitive propositions and definitions for each nonprimitive accepted proposition. Prominent proponents of more or less modernized versions of the axiomatic method, e.g. Pascal, Nicod 34, and Tarski, emphasizing the critical and regulatory function of the axiomatic method, explicitly open the possibility that axiomatization of an existent, preaxiomatic science may lead to rejection or modification of propositions, concepts, and argumentations that had previously been accepted. In many cases attempts to realize the ideal of an axiomatic science have resulted in discovery of “smuggled premises” and other previously unnoted presuppositions, leading in turn to recognition of the need for new axioms. Modern axiomatizations of geometry are much richer in detail than those produced in ancient Greece. The earliest extant axiomatic text is based on an axiomatization of geometry due to Euclid fl. 300 B.C., which itself was based on earlier, nolonger-extant texts. Archimedes 287212 B.C. was one of the earliest of a succession of postEuclidean geometers, including Hilbert, Oswald Veblen 00, and Tarski, to propose modifications of axiomatizations of classical geometry. The traditional axiomatic method, often called the geometric method, made several presuppositions no longer widely accepted. The advent of non-Euclidean geometry was particularly important in this connection. For some workers, the goal of reorganizing an existent science was joined to or replaced by a new goal: characterizing or giving implicit definition to the structure of the subject matter of the science. Moreover, subsequent innovations in logic and foundations of mathematics, especially development of syntactically precise formalized languages and effective systems of formal deductions, have substantially increased the degree of rigor attainable. In particular, critical axiomatic exposition of a body of scientific knowledge is now not thought to be fully adequate, however successful it may be in realizing the goals of the original axiomatic method, so long as it does not present the underlying logic including language, semantics, and deduction system. For these and other reasons the expression ‘axiomatic method’ has undergone many “redefinitions,” some of which have only the most tenuous connection with the original meaning.  The term ‘axiom’ has been associated to different items by philosophers. There’s the axiom of comprehension, also called axiom of abstraction, the axiom that for every property, there is a corresponding set of things having that property; i.e., f DA x x 1 A È f x, where f is a property and A is a set. The axiom was used in Frege’s formulation of set theory and is the axiom that yields Russell’s paradox, discovered in 1. If fx is instantiated as x 2 x, then the result that A 1 A È A 2 A is easily obtained, which yields, in classical logic, the explicit contradiction A 1 A & A 2 A. The paradox can be avoided by modifying the comprehension axiom and using instead the separation axiom, f DA x x 1 A Èfx & x 1 B. This yields only the result that A 1 A ÈA 2 A & A 1 B, which is not a contradiction. The paradox can also be avoided by retaining the comprehension axiom but restricting the symbolic language, so that ‘x 1 x’ is not a meaningful formula. Russell’s type theory, presented in Principia Mathematica, uses this approach.  Then there’s the axiom of consistency, an axiom stating that a given set of sentences is consistent. Let L be a formal language, D a deductive system for L, S any set of sentences of L, and C the statement ‘S is consistent’ i.e., ‘No contradiction is derivable from S via D’. For certain sets S e.g., the theorems of D it is interesting to ask: Can C be expressed in L? If so, can C be proved in D? If C can be expressed in L but not proved in D, can C be added consistently to D as a new axiom? Example from Gödel: Let L and D be adequate for elementary number theory, and S be the axioms of D; then C can be expressed in L but not proved in D, but can be added as a new axiom to form a stronger system D’. Sometimes we can express in L an axiom of consistency in the semantic sense i.e., ‘There is a universe in which all the sentences in S are true’. Trivial example: suppose the only non-logical axiom in D is ‘For any two sets B and B’, there exists the union of B and B’ ’. Then C might be ‘There is a set U such that, for any sets B and B’ in U, there exists in U the union of B and B’ ’. 

ayerianism:  Grice: “One of the most memorable pieces of Ayer’s philosophical depth is his ‘Saturday is in bed.’ It was so popular at Oxford that Ryle, Ayer’s tutor, felt he could use it without credit!’ -- a. j. , philosopher of Swiss ancestry, one of the most important of the Oxford logical positivists. He continued to occupy a dominant place in analytic philosophy as he gradually modified his adherence to central tenets of the view. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and, after a brief period at the  of Vienna, became a lecturer in philosophy at Christ Church in 3. After the war he returned to Oxford as fellow and dean of Wadham . He was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at the  of London 659, Wykeham Professor of Logic in the  of Oxford and a fellow of New  978, and a fellow of Wolfson , Oxford 883. Ayer was knighted in 3 and was a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. His early work clearly and forcefully developed the implications of the positivists’ doctrines that all cognitive statements are either analytic and a priori, or synthetic, contingent, and a posteriori, and that empirically meaningful statements must be verifiable must admit of confirmation or disconfirmation. In doing so he defended reductionist analyses of the self, the external world, and other minds. Value statements that fail the empiricist’s criterion of meaning but defy naturalistic analysis were denied truth-value and assigned emotive meaning. Throughout his writings he maintained a foundationalist perspective in epistemology in which sense-data later more neutrally described occupied not only a privileged epistemic position but constituted the subject matter of the most basic statements to be used in reductive analyses. Although in later works he significantly modified many of his early views and abandoned much of their strict reductionism, he remained faithful to an empiricist’s version of foundationalism and the basic idea behind the verifiability criterion of meaning. His books include Language, Truth and Logic; The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge; The Problems of Knowledge; Philosophical Essays; The Concept of a Person; The Origins of Pragmatism; Metaphysics and Common Sense; Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage; The Central Questions of Philosophy; Probability and Evidence; Philosophy in the Twentieth Century; Russell; Hume; Freedom and Morality, Ludwig Vitters; and Voltaire. Born of Swiss parentage in London, “Freddie” got an Oxford educated, and though he wanted to be a judge, he read Lit. Hum (Phil.). He spent three months in Vienna, and when he returned, Grice called him ‘enfant terrible.’ Ayer would later cite Grice in the Aristotelian symposium on the Causal Theory of Perception. But the type of subtlety in conversational implicaturum that Grice is interested goes over Freddie’s head. (“That,” or he was not interested.” Grice was glad that Oxford was ready to attack Ayer on philosophical grounds, and he later lists Positivism as a ‘monster’ on his way to the City of Eternal Truth. “Verificationism” was anti-Oxonian, in being mainly anti-Bradleyian, who is recognised by every Oxonian philosopher as “one of the clearest and subtlest prosists in English, and particularly Oxonian, philosophy.” Ayer later became the logic professor at Oxford – which is now taught no longer at the Sub-Faculty of Philosophy, but the Department of Mathematics!

babbage: discussed by Grice in his functionalist approach to philosophical psychology. English applied mathematician, inventor, and expert on machinery and manufacturing. His chief interest was in developing mechanical “engines” to compute tables of functions. Until the invention of the electronic computer, printed tables of functions were important aids to calculation. Babbage invented the difference engine, a machine that consisted of a series of accumulators each of which, in turn, transmitted its contents to its successor, which added to them to its own contents. He built only a model, but George and Edvard Scheutz built difference engines that were actually used. Though tables of squares and cubes could be calculated by a difference engine, the more commonly used tables of logarithms and of trigonometric functions could not. To calculate these and other useful functions, Babbage conceived of the analytical engine, a machine for numerical analysis. The analytical engine was to have a store memory and a mill arithmetic unit. The store was to hold decimal numbers on toothed wheels, and to transmit them to the mill and back by means of wheels and toothed bars. The mill was to carry out the arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division mechanically, greatly extending the technology of small calculators. The operations of the mill were to be governed by pegged drums, derived from the music box. A desired sequence of operations would be punched on cards, which would be strung together like the cards of a Jacquard loom and read by the machine. The control mechanisms could branch and execute a different sequence of cards when a designated quantity changed sign. Numbers would be entered from punched cards and the answers punched on cards. The answers might also be imprinted on metal sheets from which the calculated tables would be printed, thus avoiding the errors of proofreading. Although Babbage formulated various partial plans for the analytical engine and built a few pieces of it, the machine was never realized. Given the limitations of mechanical computing technology, building an analytical engine would probably not have been an economical way to produce numerical tables. The modern electronic computer was invented and developed completely independently of Babbage’s pioneering work. Yet because of it, Babbage’s work has been publicized and he has become famous. 

bachelard: g., philosopher of applied rationalism, enjoyed by Grice. philosopher of science and literary analyst. His philosophy of science developed, e.g., in The New Scientific Spirit, 4, and Rational Materialism, 3 began from reflections on the relativistic and quantum revolutions in twentieth-century physics. Bachelard viewed science as developing through a series of discontinuous changes epistemological breaks. Such breaks overcome epistemological obstacles: methodological and conceptual features of commonsense or outdated science that block the path of inquiry. Bachelard’s emphasis on the discontinuity of scientific change strikingly anticipated Thomas Kuhn’s focus, many years later, on revolutionary paradigm change. However, unlike Kuhn, Bachelard held to a strong notion of scientific progress across revolutionary discontinuities. Although each scientific framework rejects its predecessors as fundamentally erroneous, earlier frameworks may embody permanent achievements that will be preserved as special cases within subsequent frameworks. Newton’s laws of motion, e.g., are special limit-cases of relativity theory. Bachelard based his philosophy of science on a “non-Cartesian epistemology” that rejects Descartes’s claim that knowledge must be founded on incorrigible intuitions of first truths. All knowledge claims are subject to revision in the light of further evidence. Similarly, he rejected a naive realism that defines reality in terms of givens of ordinary sense experience and ignores the ontological constructions of scientific concepts and instrumentation. He maintained, however, that denying this sort of realism did not entail accepting idealism, which makes only the mental ultimately real. Instead he argued for an “applied rationalism,” which recognizes the active role of reason in constituting objects of knowledge while admitting that any constituting act of reason must be directed toward an antecedently given object. Although Bachelard denied the objective reality of the perceptual and imaginative worlds, he emphasized their subjective and poetic significance. Complementing his writings on science are a series of books on imagination and poetic imagery e.g., The Psychoanalysis of Fire, 8; The Poetics of Space, 7 which subtly unpack the meaning of archetypal in Jung’s sense images. He put forward a “law of the four elements,” according to which all images can be related to the earth, air, fire, and water posited by Empedocles as the fundamental forms of matter. Together with Georges Canguilhem, his successor at the Sorbonne, Bachelard had an immense impact on several generations of  students of philosophy. He and Canguilhem offered an important alternative to the more fashionable and widely known phenomenology and existentialism and were major influences on among others Althusser and Foucault. 

baconian – “You can tell when a contitnental philosopher knows about insular philosopher when they can tell one bacon from the other.” – H. P. Grice. Francis: English philosopher, essayist, and scientific methodologist. In politics Bacon rose to the position of lord chancellor. In 1621 he retired to private life after conviction for taking bribes in his official capacity as judge. Bacon championed the new empiricism resulting from the achievements of early modern science. He opposed alleged knowledge based on appeals to authority, and on the barrenness of Scholasticism. He thought that what is needed is a new attitude and methodology based strictly on scientific practices. The goal of acquiring knowledge is the good of mankind: knowledge is power. The social order that should result from applied science is portrayed in his New Atlantis1627. The method of induction to be employed is worked out in detail in his Novum Organum 1620. This new logic is to replace that of Aristotle’s syllogism, as well as induction by simple enumeration of instances. Neither of these older logics can produce knowledge of actual natural laws. Bacon thought that we must intervene in nature, manipulating it by means of experimental control leading to the invention of new technology. There are well-known hindrances to acquisition of knowledge of causal laws. Such hindrances false opinions, prejudices, which “anticipate” nature rather than explain it, Bacon calls idols idola. Idols of the tribe idola tribus are natural mental tendencies, among which are the idle search for purposes in nature, and the impulse to read our own desires and needs into nature. Idols of the cave idola specus are predispositions of particular individuals. The individual is inclined to form opinions based on idiosyncrasies of education, social intercourse, reading, and favored authorities. Idols of the marketplace idola fori Bacon regards as the most potentially dangerous of all dispositions, because they arise from common uses of language that often result in verbal disputes. Many words, though thought to be meaningful, stand for nonexistent things; others, although they name actual things, are poorly defined or used in confused ways. Idols of the theater idola theatri depend upon the influence of received theories. The only authority possessed by such theories is that they are ingenious verbal constructions. The aim of acquiring genuine knowledge does not depend on superior skill in the use of words, but rather on the discovery of natural laws. Once the idols are eliminated, the mind is free to seek knowledge of natural laws based on experimentation. Bacon held that nothing exists in nature except bodies material objects acting in conformity with fixed laws. These laws are “forms.” For example, Bacon thought that the form or cause of heat is the motion of the tiny particles making up a body. This form is that on which the existence of heat depends. What induction seeks to show is that certain laws are perfectly general, universal in application. In every case of heat, there is a measurable change in the motion of the particles constituting the moving body. Bacon thought that scientific induction proceeds as follows. First, we look for those cases where, given certain changes, certain others invariably follow. In his example, if certain changes in the form motion of particles take place, heat always follows. We seek to find all of the “positive instances” of the form that give rise to the effect of that form. Next, we investigate the “negative instances,” cases where in the absence of the form, the qualitative change does not take place. In the operation of these methods it is important to try to produce experimentally “prerogative instances,” particularly striking or typical examples of the phenomenon under investigation. Finally, in cases where the object under study is present to some greater or lesser degree, we must be able to take into account why these changes occur. In the example, quantitative changes in degrees of heat will be correlated to quantitative changes in the speed of the motion of the particles. This method implies that backward causation Bacon, Francis 68   68 in many cases we can invent instruments to measure changes in degree. Such inventions are of course the hoped-for outcome of scientific inquiry, because their possession improves the lot of human beings. Bacon’s strikingly modern but not entirely novel empiricist methodology influenced nineteenth-century figures e.g., Sir John Herschel and J. S. Mill who generalized his results and used them as the basis for displaying new insights into scientific methodology. 

baconian: “You can tell when a continental philosopher knows the first thing about insular philosophy when they can tell one bacon from the other” – H. P. Grice. R., English philosopher who earned the honorific title of Doctor Mirabilis. He was one of the first medievals in the Latin West to lecture and comment on newly recovered work by Aristotle in natural philosophy, physics, and metaphysics. Born in Somerset and educated at both Oxford  and the  of Paris, he became by 1273 a master of arts at Paris, where he taught for about ten years. In 1247 he resigned his teaching post to devote his energies to investigating and promoting topics he considered neglected but important insofar as they would lead to knowledge of God. The English “experimentalist” Grosseteste, the man Peter of Maricourt, who did pioneering work on magnetism, and the author of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum influenced Roger’s new perspective. By 1257, however, partly from fatigue, Roger had put this work aside and entered the Franciscan order in England. To his dismay, he did not receive within the order the respect and freedom to write and teach he had expected. During the early 1260s Roger’s views about reforming the  curriculum reached Cardinal Guy le Gos de Foulques, who, upon becoming Pope Clement IV in 1265, demanded to see Roger’s writings. In response, Roger produced the Opus maius 1267  an encyclopedic work that argues, among other things, that 1 the study of Hebrew and Grecian is indispensable for understanding the Bible, 2 the study of mathematics encompassing geometry, astronomy, and astrology is, with experimentation, the key to all the sciences and instrumental in theology, and 3 philosophy can serve theology by helping in the conversion of non-believers. Roger believed that although the Bible is the basis for human knowledge, we can use reason in the service of knowledge. It is not that rational argument can, on his view, provide fullblown proof of anything, but rather that with the aid of reason one can formulate hypotheses about nature that can be confirmed by experience. According to Roger, knowledge arrived at in this way will lead to knowledge of nature’s creator. All philosophical, scientific, and linguistic endeavors are valuable ultimately for the service they can render to theology. Roger summarizes and develops his views on these matters in the Opus minus and the Opus tertium, produced within a year of the Opus maius. Roger was altogether serious in advocating curricular change. He took every opportunity to rail against many of his celebrated contemporaries e.g., Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, and Aquinas for not being properly trained in philosophy and for contributing to the demise of theology by lecturing on Peter Lombard’s Sentences instead of the Bible. He also wrote both Grecian and Hebrew grammars, did important work in optics, and argued for calendar reform on the basis of his admittedly derivative astronomical research. One should not, however, think that Roger was a good mathematician or natural scientist. He apparently never produced a single theorem or proof in mathematics, he was not always a good judge of astronomical competence he preferred al-Bitruji to Ptolemy, and he held alchemy in high regard, believing that base metals could be turned into silver and gold. Some have gone so far as to claim that Roger’s renown in the history of science is vastly overrated, based in part on his being confusedly linked with the fourteenthcentury Oxford Calculators, who do deserve credit for paving the way for certain developments in seventeenth-century science. Roger’s devotion to curricular reform eventually led to his imprisonment by Jerome of Ascoli the future Pope Nicholas IV, probably between 1277 and 1279. Roger’s teachings were said to have contained “suspect novelties.” Judging from the date of his imprisonment, these novelties may have been any number of propositions condemned by the bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, in 1277. But his imprisonment may also have had something to do with the anger he undoubtedly provoked by constantly abusing the members of his order regarding their approach to education, or with his controversial Joachimite views about the apocalypse and the imminent coming of the Antichrist. Given Roger’s interest in educational reform and his knack for systematization, it is not unlikely that he was abreast of and had something to say about most of the central philosophical issues of the day. If so, his writings could be an important source of information about thirteenth-century Scholastic philosophy generally. In this connection, recent investigations have revealed, e.g., that he may well have played an important role in the development of logic and philosophy of language during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. In the course of challenging the views of certain people some of whom have been tentatively identified as Richard of Cornwall, Lambert of Auxerre, Siger of Brabant, Henry of Ghent, Boethius of Dacia, William Sherwood, and the Magister Abstractionum on the nature of signs and how words function as signs, Roger develops and defends views that appear to be original. The pertinent texts include the Sumule dialectices c.1250, the De signis part of Part III of the Opus maius, and the Compendium studii theologiae 1292. E.g., in connection with the question whether Jesus could be called a man during the three-day entombment and, thus, in connection with the related question whether man can be said to be animal when no man exists, and with the sophism ‘This is a dead man, therefore this is a man’, Roger was not content to distinguish words from all other signs as had been the tradition. He distinguished between signs originating from nature and from the soul, and between natural signification and conventional ad placitum signification which results expressly or tacitly from the imposition of meaning by one or more individuals. He maintained that words signify existing and non-existing entities only equivocally, because words conventionally signify only presently existing things. On this view, therefore, ‘man’ is not used univocally when applied to an existing man and to a dead man. 

bona fides: vs. mala fides: dishonest and blameworthy instances of self-deception; 2 inauthentic and self-deceptive refusal to admit to ourselves and others our full freedom, thereby avoiding anxiety in making decisions and evading responsibility for actions and attitudes Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 3; 3 hypocrisy or dishonesty in speech and conduct, as in making a promise without intending to keep it. One self-deceiving strategy identified by Sartre is to embrace other people’s views in order to avoid having to form one’s own; another is to disregard options so that one’s life appears predetermined to move in a fixed direction. Occasionally Sartre used a narrower, fourth sense: self-deceptive beliefs held on the basis of insincere and unreasonable interpretations of evidence, as contrasted with the dishonesty of “sincerely” acknowledging one truth “I am disposed to be a thief” in order to deny a deeper truth “I am free to change”. 

bain: a., philosopher and reformer, biographer of James Mill 2 and J. S. Mill 2 and founder of the first psychological journal, Mind 1876, to which Grice submitted his “Personal identity.” In the development of psychology, Bain represents in England alongside Continental thinkers such as Taine and Lotze the final step toward the founding of psychology as a science. His significance stems from his wish to “unite psychology and physiology,” fulfilled in The Senses and the Intellect 1855 and The Emotions and the Will 1859, abridged in one volume, Mental and Moral Science 1868. Neither Bain’s psychology nor his physiology were particularly original. His psychology came from English empiricism and associationism, his physiology from Johannes Muller’s 180158 Elements of Physiology 1842. Muller was an early advocate of the reflex, or sensorimotor, conception of the nervous system, holding that neurons conduct sensory information to the brain or motor commands from the brain, the brain connecting sensation with appropriate motor response. Like Hartley before him, Bain grounded the laws of mental association in the laws of neural connection. In opposition to faculty psychology, Bain rejected the existence of mental powers located in different parts of the brain On the Study of Character, 1861. By combining associationism with modern physiology, he virtually completed the movement of philosophical psychology toward science. In philosophy, his most important concept was his analysis of belief as “a preparation to act.” By thus entwining conception and action, he laid the foundation for pragmatism, and for the focus on adaptive behavior central to modern psychology. 

banez: philosopher known for his disputes with Molina concerning divine grace, or grice. Against Molina he held physical predetermination, the view that God physically determines the secondary causes of human action. This renders grace intrinsically efficacious and independent of human will and merits. He is also known for his understanding of the centrality of the act of existence esse in Thomistic metaphysics. Bañez’s most important works are his commentaries on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae and Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption. 

barthesian: semiotic: r.  post-structuralist literary critic and essayist. Born in Cherbourg, he suffered from numerous ailments as a child and spent much of his early life as a semiinvalid. After leaving the military, he took up several positions teaching subjects like classics, grammar, and philology. His interest in linguistics finally drew him to literature, and by the mid-0s he had already published what would become a classic in structural analysis, The Elements of Semiology. Its principal message is that words are merely one kind of sign whose meaning lies in relations of difference between them. This concept was later amended to include the reading subject, and the structuring effect that the subject has on the literary work  a concept expressed later in his S/Z and The Pleasure of the Text. Barthes’s most mature contributions to the post-structuralist movement were brilliant and witty interpretations of visual, tactile, and aural sign systems, culminating in the publication of several books and essays on photography, advertising, film, and cuisine. 

bite off more than you can chew: To bite is the function of the FRONT teeth (incisors and canines); the back teeth (molars) CHEW, crush, or grind. So the relation is Russellian.  1916 G. B. Shaw Pygmalion 195 The mistake we describe metaphorically as ‘biting off more than they can chew’.  a1960 J. L. Austin Sense & Sensibilia (1962) i. 1 They [sc. doctrines] all bite off more than they can chew. While the NED would not DARE define this obviousness, the OED does not. to undertake too much, to be too ambitious – “irrational” simpliciter for Grice (WoW).

basilides: philosopher, he improved on Valentinus’s doctrine of emanations, positing 365 the number of days in a year levels of existence in the Pleroma the fullness of the Godhead, all descending from the ineffable Father. He taught that the rival God was the God of the Jews the God of the Old Testament, who created the material world. Redemption consists in the coming of the first begotten of the Father, Noûs Mind, in human form in order to release the spiritual element imprisoned within human bodies. Like other gnostics he taught that we are saved by knowledge, not faith. He apparently held to the idea of reincarnation before the restoration of all things to the Pleroma. 

basis: basing relation, also called basis relation, the relation between a belief or item of knowledge and a second belief or item of knowledge when the latter is the ground basis of the first. It is clear that some knowledge is indirect, i.e., had or gained on the basis of some evidence, as opposed to direct knowledge, which assuming there is any is not so gained, or based. The same holds for justified belief. In one broad sense of the term, the basing relation is just the one connecting indirect knowledge or indirectly justified belief to the evidence: to give an account of either of the latter is to give an account of the basing relation. There is a narrower view of the basing relation, perhaps implicit in the first. A person knows some proposition P on the basis of evidence or reasons only if her belief that P is based on the evidence or reasons, or perhaps on the possession of the evidence or reasons. The narrow basing relation is indicated by this question: where a belief that P constitutes indirect knowledge or justification, what is it for that belief to be based on the evidence or reasons that support the knowledge or justification? The most widely favored view is that the relevant belief is based on evidence or reasons only if the belief is causally related to the belief or reasons. Proponents of this causal view differ concerning what, beyond this causal relationship, is needed by an account of the narrow basing relation. 

batailleian communicatum: g., philosopher and novelist with enormous influence on post-structuralist thought. By locating value in expenditure as opposed to accumulation, Bataille inaugurates the era of the death of the subject. He insists that individuals must transgress the limits imposed by subjectivity to escape isolation and communicate. Bataille’s prewar philosophical contributions consist mainly of short essays, the most significant of which have been collected in Visions of Excess. These essays introduce the central idea that base matter disrupts rational subjectivity by attesting to the continuity in which individuals lose themselves. Inner Experience, Bataille’s first lengthy philosophical treatise, was followed by Guilty 4 and On Nietzsche 5. Together, these three works constitute Bataille’s Summa Atheologica, which explores the play of the isolation and the dissolution of beings in terms of the experience of excess laughter, tears, eroticism, death, sacrifice, poetry. The Accursed Share 9, which he considered his most important work, is his most systematic account of the social and economic implications of expenditure. In Erotism 7 and The Tears of Eros 1, he focuses on the excesses of sex and death. Throughout his life, Bataille was concerned with the question of value. He located it in the excess that lacerates individuals and opens channels of communication. 

bath: Grice never referred to William of Occam as “William” (“that would be rude”). Similarlly, his Adelard of Bath is referred to as “Bath.” (“Sometimes I wish people would refer to me as “Harborne” but that was the day!”). “Of course, it is amusing to refer to adelard as “Bath” since he was only there for twelve years! But surely to call him “Oxford” would be supernumerary!”. Grice found inspiration on Adelard’s “On the same and the different,” and he was pleased that he had been educated not far from Bath, at Clifton! Adelard is Benedictine monk notable for his contributions to the introduction of Arabic science in the West. After studying at Tours, he taught at Laon, then spent seven years traveling in Italy, possibly Spain, and Cilicia and Syria, before returning to England. In his dialogue On the Same and the Different, he remarks, concerning universals, that the names of individuals, species, and genera are imposed on the same essence regarded in different respects. He also wrote Seventy-six Questions on Nature, based on Arabic learning; works on the use of the abacus and the astrolabe; a work on falconry; and translations of Abu Ma’shar’s Arabic active euthanasia Adelard of Bath 9 4065A-   9 Shorter Introduction to Astronomy, al-Khwarizmi’s fl. c.830 astronomical tables, and Euclid’s Elements.

baumgarten: a. g. – Grice loved his coinage of ‘aesthetics’-- Alexander Gottlieb 171462, G. philosopher. Born in Berlin, he was educated in Halle and taught at Halle 173840 and Frankfurt an der Oder 174062. Baumgarten was brought up in the Pietist circle of A. H. Francke but adopted the anti-Pietist rationalism of Wolff. He wrote textbooks in metabasic particular Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 73   73 physics Metaphysica, 1739 and ethics Ethica Philosophica, 1740; Initia Philosophiae Practicae Prima [“First Elements of Practical Philosophy”], 1760 on which Kant lectured. For the most part, Baumgarten did not significantly depart from Wolff, although in metaphysics he was both further and yet closer to Leibniz than was Wolff: unlike Leibniz, he argued for real physical influx, but, unlike Wolff, he did not restrict preestablished harmony to the mindbody relationship alone, but paradoxically reextended it to include all relations of substances. Baumgarten’s claim to fame, however, rests on his introduction of the discipline of aesthetics into G. philosophy, and indeed on his introduction of the term ‘aesthetics’ as well. Wolff had explained pleasure as the response to the perception of perfection by means of the senses, in turn understood as clear but confused perception. Baumgarten subtly but significantly departed from Wolff by redefining our response to beauty as pleasure in the perfection of sensory perception, i.e., in the unique potential of sensory as opposed to merely conceptual representation. This concept was first introduced in his dissertation Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus “Philosophical Meditations on some Matters pertaining to Poetry,” 1735, which defined a poem as a “perfect sensate discourse,” and then generalized in his twovolume but still incomplete Aesthetica 1750 58. One might describe Baumgarten’s aesthetics as cognitivist but no longer rationalist: while in science or logic we must always prefer discursive clarity, in art we respond with pleasure to the maximally dense or “confused” intimation of ideas. Baumgarten’s theory had great influence on Lessing and Mendelssohn, on Kant’s theory of aesthetic ideas, and even on the aesthetics of Hegel. 

bayle: p., Grice on longitudinal history of philosophy. philosopher who also pioneered in disinterested, critical history. A Calvinist forced into exile in 1681, Bayle nevertheless rejected the prevailing use of history as an instrument of partisan or sectarian interest. He achieved fame and notoriety with his multivolume Dictionnaire historique et critique 1695. For each subject covered, Bayle provided a biographical sketch and a dispassionate examination of the historical record and interpretive controversies. He also repeatedly probed the troubled and troubling boundary between reason and faith philosophy and religion. In the article “David,” the seemingly illicit conduct of God’s purported agent yielded reflections on the morals of the elect and the autonomy of ethics. In “Pyrrho,” Bayle argued that self-evidence, the most plausible candidate for the criterion of truth, is discredited by Christianity because some self-evident principles contradict essential Christian truths and are therefore false. Finally, provoking Leibniz’s Theodicy, Bayle argued, most relentlessly in “Manichaeans” and “Paulicians,” that there is no defensible rational solution to the problem of evil. Bayle portrayed himself as a Christian skeptic, but others have seen instead an ironic critic of religion  a precursor of the  Enlightenment. Bayle’s purely philosophical reflections support his self-assessment, since he consistently maintains that philosophy achieves not comprehension and contentment, but paradox and puzzlement. In making this case he proved to be a superb critic of philosophical systems. Some examples are “Zeno of Elea”  on space, time, and motion; “Rorarius”  on mind and body and animal mechanism; and “Spinoza”  on the perils of monism. Bayle’s skepticism concerning philosophy significantly influenced Berkeley and Hume. His other important works include Pensées diverses de la comète de 1683 1683; Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jesus Christ: contrain les d’entrer 1686; and Réponse aux questions d’un provincial1704; and an early learned periodical, the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 1684 87. 

beattie, j. Common-sense – H. P. Grice, “The so-called English common-sense,” Beattie: j. philosopher and poet who, in criticizing Hume, widened the latter’s audience. A member of the Scottish school of common sense philosophy along with Oswald and Reid, Beattie’s major work was An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth 1771, in which he criticizes Hume for fostering skepticism and infidelity. His positive view was that the mind possesses a common sense, i.e., a power for perceiving self-evident truths. Common sense is instinctive, unalterable by education; truth is what common sense determines the mind to believe. Beattie cited Hume and then claimed that his views led to moral and religious evils. When Beattie’s Essay was tr. into G. 1772, Kant could read Hume’s discussions of personal identity and causation. Since these topics were not covered in Hume’s Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Beattie provided Kant access to two issues in the Treatises of Human Nature critical to the development of transcendental idealism.

beccaria, one of the most essential of Italian philosophers – Referred to by H. P. Grice in his explorations on moral versus legal right, studied in Parma and Pavia and taught political economy in Milan. Here, he met Pietro and Alessandro Verri and other Milanese intellectuals attempting to promote political, economical, and judiciary reforms. His major work, Dei delitti e delle pene “On Crimes and Punishments,” 1764, denounces the contemporary methods in the administration of justice and the treatment f criminals. Beccaria argues that the highest good is the greatest happiness shared by the greatest number of people; hence, actions against the state are the most serious crimes. Crimes against individuals and property are less serious, and crimes endangering public harmony are the least serious. The purposes of punishment are deterrence and the protection of society. However, the employment of torture to obtain confessions is unjust and useless: it results in acquittal of the strong and the ruthless and conviction of the weak and the innocent. Beccaria also rejects the death penalty as a war of the state against the individual. He claims that the duration and certainty of the punishment, not its intensity, most strongly affect criminals. Beccaria was influenced by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Condillac. His major work was tr. into many languages and set guidelines for revising the criminal and judicial systems of several European countries. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Beccaria," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

beneke: a Kantian commentator beloved by Grice (“if only because he could read Kant in the vernacular!”)-- philosopher who was influenced by Herbart and English empiricism and criticized rationalistic metaphysics. He taught at Berlin and published some eighteen books in philosophy. His major work was Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft 1833. He wrote a critical study of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and another on his moral theory; other works included Psychologie Skizzen 1825, Metaphysik und Religionphilosophie 1840, and Die neue Psychologie 1845. The “new psychology” developed by Beneke held that the hypostatization of “faculties” led to a mythical psychology. He proposed a method that would yield a natural science of the soul or, in effect, an associationist psychology. Influenced by the British empiricists, he conceived the elements of mental life as dynamic, active processes or impulses Trieben. These “elementary faculties,” originally activated by stimuli, generate the substantial unity of the nature of the psychic by their persistence as traces, as well as by their reciprocal adjustment in relation to the continuous production of new forces. In what Beneke called “pragmatic psychology,” the psyche is a bundle of impulses, forces, and functions. Psychological theory should rest on inductive analyses of the facts of inner perception. This, in turn, is the foundation of the philosophical disciplines of logic, ethics, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion. In this regard, Beneke held a psychologism. He agreed with Herbart that psychology must be based on inner experience and must eschew metaphysical speculation, but rejected Hebart’s mathematical reductionism. Beneke sought to create a “pragmatic philosophy” based on his psychology. In his last years he contributed to pedagogic theory. 

benthamian: -- semiotics -- j. Engish philosopher of ethics and political-legal theory. Born in London, he entered Queen’s, Oxford, at age 12, and after graduation entered Lincoln’s Inn to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1767 but never practiced. He spent his life writing, advocating changes along utilitarian lines maximal happiness for everyone affected of the whole legal system, especially the criminal law. He was a strong influence in changes of the British law of evidence; in abolition of laws permitting imprisonment for indebtedness; in the belief, basic Bentham, Jeremy 79   79 reform of Parliamentary representation; in the formation of a civil service recruited by examination; and in much else. His major work published during his lifetime was An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation 1789. He became head of a “radical” group including James Mill and J. S. Mill, and founded the Westminster Review and  , London where his embalmed body still reposes in a closet. He was a friend of Catherine of Russia and John Quincy Adams, and was made a citizen of France in 1792. Pleasure, he said, is the only good, and pain the only evil: “else the words good and evil have no meaning.” He gives a list of examples of what he means by ‘pleasure’: pleasures of taste, smell, or touch; of acquiring property; of learning that one has the goodwill of others; of power; of a view of the pleasures of those one cares about. Bentham was also a psychological hedonist: pleasures and pains determine what we do. Take pain. Your state of mind may be painful now at the time just prior to action because it includes the expectation of the pain say of being burned; the present pain or the expectation of later pain  Bentham is undecided which motivates action to prevent being burned. One of a person’s pleasures, however, may be sympathetic enjoyment of the well-being of another. So it seems one can be motivated by the prospect of the happiness of another. His psychology here is not incompatible with altruistic motivation. Bentham’s critical utilitarianism lies in his claim that any action, or measure of government, ought to be taken if and only if it tends to augment the happiness of everyone affected  not at all a novel principle, historically. When “thus interpreted, the words ought, and right and wrong . . . have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none.” Bentham evidently did not mean this statement as a purely linguistic point about the actual meaning of moral terms. Neither can this principle be proved; it is a first principle from which all proofs proceed. What kind of reason, then, can he offer in its support? At one point he says that the principle of utility, at least unconsciously, governs the judgment of “every thinking man . . . unavoidably.” But his chief answer is his critique of a widely held principle that a person properly calls an act wrong if when informed of the facts he disapproves of it. Bentham cites other language as coming to the same thesis: talk of a “moral sense,” or common sense, or the understanding, or the law of nature, or right reason, or the “fitness of things.” He says that this is no principle at all, since a “principle is something that points out some external consideration, as a means of warranting and guiding the internal sentiments of approbation. . . .” The alleged principle also allows for widespread disagreement about what is moral. So far, Bentham’s proposal has not told us exactly how to determine whether an action or social measure is right or wrong. Bentham suggests a hedonic calculus: in comparing two actions under consideration, we count up the pleasures or pains each will probably produce  how intense, how long-lasting, whether near or remote, including any derivative later pleasures or pains that may be caused, and sum them up for all persons who will be affected. Evidently these directions can provide at best only approximate results. We are in no position to decide whether one pleasure for one hour is greater than another pleasure for half an hour, even when they are both pleasures of one person who can compare them. How much more when the pleasures are of different persons? Still, we can make judgments important for the theory of punishment: whether a blow in the face with no lasting damage for one person is more or less painful than fifty lashes for his assailant! Bentham has been much criticized because he thought that two pleasures are equal in value, if they are equally intense, enduring, etc. As he said, “Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry.” It has been thought e.g., by J. S. Mill that some pleasures, especially intellectual ones, are higher and deserve to count more. But it may be replied that the so-called higher pleasures are more enduring, are less likely to be followed by satiety, and open up new horizons of enjoyment; and when these facts are taken into account, it is not clear that there is need to accord higher status to intellectual pleasures as such. A major goal of Bentham’s was to apply to the criminal law his principle of maximizing the general utility. Bentham thought there should be no punishment of an offense if it is not injurious to someone. So how much punishment should there be? The least amount the effect of which will result in a greater degree of happiness, overall. The benefit of punishment is primarily deterrence, by attaching to the thought of a given act the thought of the painful sanction  which will deter both the past and prospective lawbreakers. The punishment, then, must be severe enough to outweigh the benefit of the offense to the agent, making allowance, by addition, for the uncertainty that the punishment will actually occur. There are some harmful acts, however, that it is Bentham, Jeremy Bentham, Jeremy 80   80 not beneficial to punish. One is an act needful to produce a greater benefit, or avoid a serious evil, for the agent. Others are those which a penal prohibition could not deter: when the law is unpublished or the agent is insane or an infant. In some cases society need feel no alarm about the future actions of the agent. Thus, an act is criminal only if intentional, and the agent is excused if he acted on the basis of beliefs such that, were they true, the act would have caused no harm, unless these beliefs were culpable in the sense that they would not have been held by a person of ordinary prudence or benevolence. The propriety of punishing an act also depends somewhat on its motive, although no motive e.g., sexual desire, curiosity, wanting money, love of reputation  is bad in itself. Yet the propriety of punishment is affected by the presence of some motivations that enhance public security because it is unlikely that they  e.g., sympathetic concern or concern for reputation  will lead to bad intentional acts. When a given motive leads to a bad intention, it is usually because of the weakness of motives like sympathy, concern for avoiding punishment, or respect for law. In general, the sanction of moral criticism should take lines roughly similar to those of the ideal law. But there are some forms of behavior, e.g., imprudence or fornication, which the law is hardly suited to punish, that can be sanctioned by morality. The business of the moral philosopher is censorial: to say what the law, or morality, ought to be. To say what is the law is a different matter: what it is is the commands of the sovereign, defined as one whom the public, in general, habitually obeys. As consisting of commands, it is imperatival. The imperatives may be addressed to the public, as in “Let no one steal,” or to judges: “Let a judge sentence anyone who steals to be hanged.” It may be thought that there is a third part, an explanation, say, of what is a person’s property; but this can be absorbed in the imperatival part, since the designations of property are just imperatives about who is to be free to do what. Why should anyone obey the actual laws? Bentham’s answer is that one should do so if and only if it promises to maximize the general happiness. He eschews contract theories of political obligation: individuals now alive never contracted, and so how are they bound? He also opposes appeal to natural rights. If what are often mentioned as natural rights were taken seriously, no government could survive: it could not tax, require military service, etc. Nor does he accept appeal to “natural law,” as if, once some law is shown to be immoral, it can be said to be not really law. That would be absurd. 

berdyaevian: n., philosopher studied by H. P. Grice for his ‘ontological Marxism,’ he began as a “Kantian Marxist” in epistemology, ethical theory, and philosophy of history, but soon turned away from Marxism although he continued to accept Marx’s critique of capitalism toward a theistic philosophy of existence stressing the values of creativity and “meonic” freedom  a freedom allegedly prior to all being, including that of God. In exile after 2, Berdyaev appears to have been the first to grasp clearly in the early 0s that the Marxist view of historical time involves a morally unacceptable devaluing and instrumentalizing of the historical present including living persons for the sake of the remote future end of a perfected communist society. Berdyaev rejects the Marxist position on both Christian and Kantian grounds, as a violation of the intrinsic value of human persons. He sees the historical order as marked by inescapable tragedy, and welcomes the “end of history” as an “overcoming” of objective historical time by subjective “existential” time with its free, unobjectified creativity. For Berdyaev the “world of objects”  physical things, laws of nature, social institutions, and human roles and relationships  is a pervasive threat to “free spiritual creativity.” Yet such creativity appears to be subject to inevitable frustration, since its outward embodiments are always “partial and fragmentary” and no “outward action” can escape ultimate “tragic failure.” Russian Orthodox traditionalists condemned Berdyaev for claiming that all creation is a “divine-human process” and for denying God’s omnipotence, but such Western process theologians as Hartshorne find Berdyaev’s position highly congenial. 

bergmann: g. infamous for calling H. P. Grice “one of them English futilitarians” -- philosopher, the youngest member of the Vienna Circle. Born in Vienna, he received his doctorate in mathematics in 8 from the  of Vienna. Originally influenced by logical positivism, he became a phenomenalist who also posited mental acts irreducible to sense-data see his The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism, 4. Although he eventually rejected phenomenalism, his ontology of material objects remained structurally phenomenalistic. Bergmann’s world is one of momentary bare i.e. natureless particulars exemplifying phenomenally simple Berdyaev, Nicolas Bergmann, Gustav 81   81 universals, relational as well as non-relational. Some of these universals are non-mental, such as color properties and spatial relations, while others, such as the “intentional characters” in virtue of which some particulars mental acts intend or represent the facts that are their “objects,” are mental. Bergmann insisted that the world is independent of both our experience of it and our thought and discourse about it: he claimed that the connection of exemplification and even the propositional connectives and quantifiers are mind-independent. See Meaning and Existence, 9; Logic and Reality, 4; and Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong, 7. Such extreme realism produced many criticisms of his philosophy that are only finally addressed in Bergmann’s recently, and posthumously, published book, New Foundations of Ontology 2, in which he concedes that his atomistic approach to ontology has inevitable limitations and proposes a way of squaring this insight with his thoroughgoing realism. 

bergson: Philosopher of central European ancestry born in Paris. The surname literally means, ‘the son of the mountain,’ -- cited by H. P. Grice in “Personal identity,” philosopher, the most influential of the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Paris and educated at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, he began his teaching career at Clermont-Ferrand in 4 and was called in 0 to the Collège de France, where his lectures enjoyed unparalleled success until his retirement in 1. Ideally placed in la belle époque of prewar Paris, his ideas influenced a broad spectrum of artistic, literary, social, and political movements. In 8 he received the Légion d’honneur and was admitted into the  Academy. From 2 through 5 he participated in the League of Nations, presiding over the creation of what was later to become UNESCO. Forced by crippling arthritis into virtual seclusion during his later years, Bergson was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 8. Initially a disciple of Spencer, Bergson broke with him after a careful examination of Spencer’s concept of time and mechanistic positivism. Following a deeply entrenched tradition in Western thought, Spencer treats time on an analogy with space as a series of discrete numerical units: instants, seconds, minutes. When confronted with experience, however  especially with that of our own psychological states  such concepts are, Bergson concludes, patently inadequate. Real duration, unlike clock time, is qualitative, dynamic, irreversible. It cannot be “spatialized” without being deformed. It gives rise in us, moreover, to free acts, which, being qualitative and spontaneous, cannot be predicted. Bergson’s dramatic contrast of real duration and geometrical space, first developed in Time and Free Will 0, was followed in 6 by the mind body theory of Matter and Memory. He argues here that the brain is not a locale for thought but a motor organ that, receiving stimuli from its environment, may respond with adaptive behavior. To his psychological and metaphysical distinction between duration and space Bergson adds, in An Introduction to Metaphysics 3, an important epistemological distinction between intuition and analysis. Intuition probes the flow of duration in its concreteness; analysis breaks up duration into static, fragmentary concepts. In Creative Evolution 7, his best-known work, Bergson argues against both Lamarck and Darwin, urging that biological evolution is impelled by a vital impetus or élan vital that drives life to overcome the downward entropic drift of matter. Biological organisms, unlike dice, must compete and survive as they undergo permutations. Hence the unresolved dilemma of Darwinism. Either mutations occur one or a few at a time in which case how can they be “saved up” to constitute new organs? or they occur all at once in which case one has a “miracle”. Bergson’s vitalism, popular in literary circles, was not accepted by many scientists or philosophers. His most general contention, however  that biological evolution is not consistent with or even well served by a mechanistic philosophy  was broadly appreciated and to many seemed convincing. This aspect of Bergson’s writings influenced thinkers as diverse as Lloyd Morgan, Alexis Carrel, Sewall Wright, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and A. N. Whitehead. The contrasts in terms of which Bergson developed his thought duration/space, intuition/ analysis, life/entropy are replaced in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion 2 by a new duality, that of the “open” and the “closed.” The Judeo-Christian tradition, he contends, if it has embraced in its history both the open society and the closed society, exhibits in its great saints and mystics a profound opening out of the human spirit toward all humanity. Bergson’s distinction between the open and the closed society was popularized by Karl Popper in his The Open Society and Its Enemies. While it has attracted serious criticism, Bergson’s philosophy has also significantly affected subsequent thinkers. Novelists as diverse as Bergson, Henri Louis Bergson, Henri Louis 82   82 Nikos Kazantzakis, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner; poets as unlike as Charles Péguy, Robert Frost, and Antonio Machado; and psychologists as dissimilar as Pierre Janet and Jean Piaget were to profit significantly from his explorations of duration, conceptualization, and memory. Both  existentialism and  process philosophy bear the imprint of his thought. 

berkeleyianism: g., -- H. P. Grice thought he had found in Berkeley a good test for the Austinian code – If something sounds harsh to Berkeley it sounds harsh. Irish philosopher and bishop in the Anglican Church of Ireland, one of the three great British empiricists along with Locke and Hume. He developed novel and influential views on the visual perception of distance and size, and an idealist metaphysical system that he defended partly on the seemingly paradoxical ground that it was the best defense of common sense and safeguard against skepticism. Berkeley studied at Trinity , Dublin, from which he graduated at nineteen. He was elected to a fellowship at Trinity in 1707, and did the bulk of his philosophical writing between that year and 1713. He was made dean of Derry in 1724, following extensive traveling on the Continent; he spent the years 172832 in Rhode Island, waiting in vain for promised Crown funds to establish a  in Bermuda. He was made bishop of Cloyne, Ireland, in 1734, and he remained there as a cleric for nearly the remainder of his life. Berkeley’s first major publication, the Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision 1709, is principally a work in the psychology of vision, though it has important philosophical presuppositions and implications. Berkeley’s theory of vision became something like the received view on the topic for nearly two hundred years and is a landmark work in the history of psychology. The work is devoted to three connected matters: how do we see, or visually estimate, the distances of objects from ourselves, the situation or place at which objects are located, and the magnitude of such objects? Earlier views, such as those of Descartes, Malebranche, and Molyneux, are rejected on the ground that their answers to the above questions allow that a person can see the distance of an object without having first learned to correlate visual and other cues. This was supposedly done by a kind of natural geometry, a computation of the distance by determining the altitude of a triangle formed by light rays from the object and the line extending from one retina to the other. On the contrary, Berkeley holds that it is clear that seeing distance is something one learns to do through trial and error, mainly by correlating cues that suggest distance: the distinctness or confusion of the visual appearance; the feelings received when the eyes turn; and the sensations attending the straining of the eyes. None of these bears any necessary connection to distance. Berkeley infers from this account that a person born blind and later given sight would not be able to tell by sight alone the distances objects were from her, nor tell the difference between a sphere and a cube. He also argues that in visually estimating distance, one is really estimating which tangible ideas one would likely experience if one were to take steps to approach the object. Not that these tangible ideas are themselves necessarily connected to the visual appearances. Instead, Berkeley holds that tangible and visual ideas are entirely heterogeneous, i.e., they are numerically and specifically distinct. The latter is a philosophical consequence of Berkeley’s theory of vision, which is sharply at odds with a central doctrine of Locke’s Essay, namely, that some ideas are common to both sight and touch. Locke’s doctrines also receive a great deal of attention in the Principles of Human Knowledge 1710. Here Berkeley considers the doctrine of abstract general ideas, which he finds in Book III of Locke’s Essay. He argues against such ideas partly on the ground that we cannot engage in the process of abstraction, partly on the ground that some abstract ideas are impossible objects, and also on the ground that such ideas are not needed for either language learning or language use. These arguments are of fundamental importance for Berkeley, since he thinks that the doctrine of abstract ideas helps to support metaphysical realism, absolute space, absolute motion, and absolute time Principles, 5, 100, 11011, as well as the view that some ideas are common to sight and touch New Theory, 123. All of these doctrines Berkeley holds to be mistaken, and the first is in direct conflict with his idealism. Hence, it is important for him to undermine any support these doctrines might receive from the abstract ideas thesis. Berkeleyan idealism is the view that the only existing entities are finite and infinite perceivers each of which is a spirit or mental substance, and entities that are perceived. Such a thesis implies that ordinary physical objects exist if and only if they are perceived, something Berkeley encapsulates in the esse est percipi principle: for all senBerkeley, George Berkeley, George 83   83 sible objects, i.e., objects capable of being perceived, their being is to be perceived. He gives essentially two arguments for this thesis. First, he holds that every physical object is just a collection of sensible qualities, and that every sensible quality is an idea. So, physical objects are just collections of sensible ideas. No idea can exist unperceived, something everyone in the period would have granted. Hence, no physical object can exist unperceived. The second argument is the socalled master argument of Principles 2224. There Berkeley argues that one cannot conceive a sensible object existing unperceived, because if one attempts to do this one must thereby conceive that very object. He concludes from this that no such object can exist “without the mind,” that is, wholly unperceived. Many of Berkeley’s opponents would have held instead that a physical object is best analyzed as a material substratum, in which some sensible qualities inhere. So Berkeley spends some effort arguing against material substrata or what he sometimes calls matter. His principal argument is that a sensible quality cannot inhere in matter, because a sensible quality is an idea, and surely an idea cannot exist except in a mind. This argument would be decisive if it were true that each sensible quality is an idea. Unfortunately, Berkeley gives no argument whatever for this contention in the Principles, and for that reason Berkeleyan idealism is not there well founded. Nor does the master argument fare much better, for there Berkeley seems to require a premise asserting that if an object is conceived, then that object is perceived. Yet such a premise is highly dubious. Probably Berkeley realized that his case for idealism had not been successful, and certainly he was stung by the poor reception of the Principles. His next book, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous 1713, is aimed at rectifying these matters. There he argues at length for the thesis that each sensible quality is an idea. The master argument is repeated, but it is unnecessary if every sensible quality is an idea. In the Dialogues Berkeley is also much concerned to combat skepticism and defend common sense. He argues that representative realism as held by Locke leads to skepticism regarding the external world and this, Berkeley thinks, helps to support atheism and free thinking in religion. He also argues, more directly, that representative realism is false. Such a thesis incorporates the claim that somesensible ideas represent real qualities in objects, the so-called primary qualities. But Berkeley argues that a sensible idea can be like nothing but another idea, and so ideas cannot represent qualities in objects. In this way, Berkeley eliminates one main support of skepticism, and to that extent helps to support the commonsensical idea that we gain knowledge of the existence and nature of ordinary physical objects by means of perception. Berkeley’s positive views in epistemology are usually interpreted as a version of foundationalism. That is, he is generally thought to have defended the view that beliefs about currently perceived ideas are basic beliefs, beliefs that are immediately and non-inferentially justified or that count as pieces of immediate knowledge, and that all other justified beliefs in contingent propositions are justified by being somehow based upon the basic beliefs. Indeed, such a foundationalist doctrine is often taken to help define empiricism, held in common by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But whatever the merits of such a view as an interpretation of Locke or Hume, it is not Berkeley’s theory. This is because he allows that perceivers often have immediate and noninferential justified beliefs, and knowledge, about physical objects. Hence, Berkeley accepts a version of foundationalism that allows for basic beliefs quite different from just beliefs about one’s currently perceived ideas. Indeed, he goes so far as to maintain that such physical object beliefs are often certain, something neither Locke nor Hume would accept. In arguing against the existence of matter, Berkeley also maintains that we literally have no coherent concept of such stuff because we cannot have any sensible idea of it. Parity of reasoning would seem to dictate that Berkeley should reject mental substance as well, thereby threatening his idealism from another quarter. Berkeley is sensitive to this line of reasoning, and replies that while we have no idea of the self, we do have some notion of the self, that is, some lessthan-complete concept. He argues that a person gains some immediate knowledge of the existence and nature of herself in a reflex act; that is, when she is perceiving something she is also conscious that something is engaging in this perception, and this is sufficient for knowledge of that perceiving entity. To complement his idealism, Berkeley worked out a version of scientific instrumentalism, both in the Principles and in a later Latin work, De Motu 1721, a doctrine that anticipates the views of Mach. In the Dialogues he tries to show how his idealism is consistent with the biblical account of the creation, and consistent as well with common sense. Berkeley, George Berkeley, George 84   84 Three later works of Berkeley’s gained him an enormous amount of attention. Alciphron 1734 was written while Berkeley was in Rhode Island, and is a philosophical defense of Christian doctrine. It also contains some additional comments on perception, supplementing earlier work on that topic. The Analyst 1734 contains trenchant criticism of the method of fluxions in differential calculus, and it set off a flurry of pamphlet replies to Berkeley’s criticisms, to which Berkeley responded in his A Defense of Free Thinking in Mathematics. Siris 1744 contains a detailed account of the medicinal values of tar-water, water boiled with the bark of certain trees. This book also contains a defense of a sort of corpuscularian philosophy that seems to be at odds with the idealism elaborated in the earlier works for which Berkeley is now famous. In the years 170708, the youthful Berkeley kept a series of notebooks in which he worked out his ideas in philosophy and mathematics. These books, now known as the Philosophical Commentaries, provide the student of Berkeley with the rare opportunity to see a great philosopher’s thought in development.  H. P. Grice was a member of the Oxford Berkeley Society. The Bishop and The Cricketer Agree: It Does Sound Harsh! When "The Times" published a note on Grice, anonymous, as obituaries should be, but some suspect P. F. S.) it went, "H. P. Grice, professional philosopher and amateur cricketer."Surely P. F. S. may have been involved, since some always preferred the commuted conjunction: "H. P. Grice, cricketer -- and philosopher."At one time, to be a 'professional' cricketer was a no-no.At one time, to be a 'professional' philosopher was a no-no -- witness Socrates!But you never know.It's TOTALLY different when it comes to BISHOPS!Grice loved that phrase, "sounds harsh." "The Austinian in the Bishop."Bishop Berkeley and H. P. Grice -- Two Ways of Representing: Likeness Or Not.Bishop Berkeley’s views on representation, broadly construed, relate to H. P. Grice’s views on representation, broadly construed.In essay, “Berkeley: An Interpretation,” Kenneth Winkler argues that Bishop Berkeley sees representation as working in one of two ways.Representation works either in the same way that an expression signifies an idea (Grice’s non-iconic) or by means of resemblance (Grice’s iconic).But we need to explore that distinction.This all relates to Bishop Berkeley’s and Grice’s views on language, their theory of resemblance, and the role that representation plays in their philosophiesmore widely.It is interesting to consider, of course, Berkeley’s predecessors (e.g., Descartes, Locke, that Grice revered in the choice of the title of his compilation of essays, “Studies in THE WAY OF WORDS,” or WoW for short), Bishop Berkeley’s contemporaries (e.g., William King, Anthony Collins), and subsequent thinkers (e.g. Hume, Shepherd, and of course Grice) accepted this distinction – and their connection to the development of both Bishoop Berkeley’s and Grice’s thought.Some philosophers connect Bishop Berkeley and Grice to non-canonical figures or those which defend novel interpretations of Berkeley’s or Grice’s own thought.Which ARE Bishop Berkeley’s and Grice’s view on the connection between representation and resemblance?Is Winkler right to attribute two types of representation to Berkeley? Could Winkler’s observations have a bearing on Grice?Do Bishop Berkeley’s and Grice’s contemporaries accept the distinction between signification and representation? (Grice’s favourite example: “A cricket team may do for England what England cannot do: engage in a game of cricket.”)Grice explores this in the “Valediction” to his “Way of Words”:“We might we well advised,” Grice says, “to consider more closely the nature of representation and its connection with meaning, and to do so in the light of three perhaps not implausible suppositions.”(1) that representation by means of verbal formulation is an artificial and noniconic mode of representation.(2) that to replace an iconic system by a noniconic system will be to introduce a new and more powerful extension of the original system, one which can do everything the former system can do and more besides.(3) that every artificial  or noniconic system is based on an antecedent NATURAL iconic system.Descriptive representation must look back to and in part do the work of prior iconic representation.That work will consist in the representation of objects and situations in the world in something like the way in which a team of North Oxfordshire cricketers may represent, say North Oxfordshire. The cricketers do on behalf of North Oxfordshire something that North Oxfordshire cannot do for itself, namely engage in a game of cricket.“Similarly, our representations (initially iconic but also noniconic) enable objects and situations in the world to do something which objects and situations cannot do for themselves, namely govern our actions and behaviour.”Etc.Grice loved to quote the Bishop on this or that ‘sounding harsh.’ “Surely, the Bishop would agree with me that it sounds harsh to say that Smith’s brain’s s being in such and such a state at noon is a case of judging something to be true on insufficient evidence."We hope neither will agree THIS sounds harsh, either, as North-Oxfordshire engaging in a game of cricket does not really, either.

berlin: “If Berlin and I have something in common is a tutor!” – H. P. Grice. Berlin: I. Russian-born philosopher and historian of ideas. He is widely acclaimed for his doctrine of radical objective pluralism; his writings on liberty; his modification, refinement, and defense of traditional liberalism against the totalitarian doctrines of the twentieth century not least Marxism-Leninism; and his brilliant and illuminating studies in the history of ideas from Machiavelli and Vico to Marx and Sorel. A founding father with Austin, Ayer, and others of Oxford philosophy in the 0s, he published several influential papers in its general spirit, but, without abandoning its empirical approach, he came increasingly to dissent from what seemed to him its unduly barren, doctrinaire, and truthdenying tendencies. From the 0s onward he broke away to devote himself principally to social and political philosophy and to the study of general ideas. His two most important contributions in social and political theory, brought together with two other valuable essays in Four Essays on Liberty 9, are “Historical Inevitability” 4 and his 8 inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford, “Two Concepts of Liberty.” The first is a bold and decisive attack on historical determinism and moral relativism and subjectivism and a ringing endorsement of the role of free will and responsibility in human history. The second contains Berlin’s enormously influential attempt to distinguish clearly between “negative” and “positive” liberty. Negative liberty, foreshadowed by such thinkers as J. S. Mill, Constant, and above all Herzen, consists in making minimal assumptions about the ultimate nature and needs of the subject, in ensuring a minimum of external interference by authority of any provenance, and in leaving open as large a field for free individual choice as is consonant with a minimum of social organization and order. Positive liberty, associated with monist and voluntarist thinkers of all kinds, not least Hegel, the G. Idealists, and their historical progeny, begins with the notion of self-mastery and proceeds to make dogmatic and far-reaching metaphysical assumptions about the essence of the subject. It then deduces from these the proper paths to freedom, and, finally, seeks to drive flesh-and-blood individuals down these preordained paths, whether they wish it or not, within the framework of a tight-knit centralized state under the irrefragable rule of rational experts, thus perverting what begins as a legitimate human ideal, i.e. positive self-direction and self-mastery, into a tyranny. “Two Concepts of Liberty” also sets out to disentangle liberty in either of these senses from other ends, such as the craving for recognition, the need to belong, or human solidarity, fraternity, or equality. Berlin’s work in the history of ideas is of a piece with his other writings. Vico and Herder 6 presents the emergence of that historicism and pluralism which shook the two-thousand-yearold monist rationalist faith in a unified body of truth regarding all questions of fact and principle in all fields of human knowledge. From this profound intellectual overturn Berlin traces in subsequent volumes of essays, such as Against the Current 9, The Crooked Timber of Humanity 0, and The Sense of Reality 6, the growth of some of the principal intellectual movements that mark our era, among them nationalism, fascism, relativism, subjectivism, nihilism, voluntarism, and existentialism. He also presents with persuasiveness and clarity that peculiar objective pluralism which he identified and made his own. There is an irreducible plurality of objective human values, many of which are incompatible with one another; hence the ineluctable need for absolute choices by individuals and groups, a need that confers supreme value upon, and forms one of the major justifications of, his conception of negative liberty; Berlin, Isaiah Berlin, Isaiah 85   85 hence, too, his insistence that utopia, namely a world where all valid human ends and objective values are simultaneously realized in an ultimate synthesis, is a conceptual impossibility. While not himself founder of any definable school or movement, Berlin’s influence as a philosopher and as a human being has been immense, not least on a variety of distinguished thinkers such as Stuart Hampshire, Charles Taylor, Bernard Williams, Richard Wollheim, Gerry Cohen, Steven Lukes, David Pears, and many others. His general intellectual and moral impact on the life of the twentieth century as writer, diplomat, patron of music and the arts, international academic elder statesman, loved and trusted friend to the great and the humble, and dazzling lecturer, conversationalist, and animateur des idées, will furnish inexhaustible material to future historians. 

bernardus: chartrensis. of Chartres,, philosopher. He was first a teacher 111419 and later chancellor 116 of the cathedral school at Chartres, which was then an active center of learning in the liberal arts and philosophy. Bernard himself was renowned as a grammarian, i.e., as an expositor of difficult texts, and as a teacher of Plato. None of his works has survived whole, and only three fragments are preserved in works by others. He is now best known for an image recorded both by his student, John of Salisbury, and by William of Conches. In Bernard’s image, he and all his medieval contemporaries were in relation to the ancient authors like “dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants.” John of Salisbury takes the image to mean both that the medievals could see more and further than the ancients, and that they could do so only because they had been lifted up by such powerful predecessors.

bernardus: of Clairvaux, Saint – Grice’s personal saint, seeing that St. John’s was originally a Cistercian monastery almost burned by Henry VIII. Cistercian monk, mystic, and religious leader. He is most noted for his doctrine of Christian humility and his depiction of the mystical experience, which exerted considerable influence on later Christian mystics. Educated in France, he entered the monastery at Cîteaux in 1112, and three years later founded a daughter monastery at Clairvaux. According to Bernard, honest self-knowledge should reveal the extent to which we fail to be what we should be in the eyes of God. That selfknowledge should lead us to curb our pride and so become more humble. Humility is necessary for spiritual purification, which in turn is necessary for contemplation of God, the highest form of which is union with God. Consistent with orthodox Christian doctrine, Bernard maintains that mystical union does not entail identity. One does not become God; rather, one’s will and God’s will come into complete conformity. 

bernoulli’s theorem: studied by Grice in his “Probability, Desirability, Credibility” -- also called the weak law of large numbers, the principle that if a series of trials is repeated n times where a there are two possible outcomes, 0 and 1, on each trial, b the probability p of 0 is the same on each trial, and c this probability is independent of the outcome of other trials, then, for arbitrary positive e, as the number n of trials is increased, the probability that the absolute value Kr/n  pK of the difference between the relative frequency r/n of 0’s in the n trials and p is less than e approaches 1. The first proof of this theorem was given by Jakob Bernoulli in Part IV of his posthumously published Ars Conjectandi of 1713. Simplifications were later constructed and his result has been generalized in a series of “weak laws of large numbers.” Although Bernoulli’s theorem derives a conclusion about the probability of the relative frequency r/n of 0’s for large n of trials given the value of p, in Ars Conjectandi and correspondence with Leibniz, Bernoulli thought it could be used to reason from information about r/n to the value of p when the latter is unknown. Speculation persists as to whether Bernoulli anticipated the inverse inference of Bayes, the confidence interval estimation of Peirce, J. Neyman, and E. S. Pearson, or the fiducial argument of R. A. Fisher. 

Bertrand’s box paradox: studied by Grice in his “Probability, Desirability, Credibility” -- a puzzle concerning conditional probability. Imagine three boxes with two drawers apiece. Each drawer of the first box contains a gold medal. Each drawer of the second contains a silver medal. One drawer of the third contains a gold medal, and the other a silver medal. At random, a box is selected and one of its drawers is opened. If a gold medal appears, what is the probability that the third box was selected? The probability seems to be ½, because the box is either the first or the third, and they seem equally probable. But a gold medal is less probable from the third box than from the first, Bernard of Chartres Bertrand’s box paradox 86   86 so the third box is actually less probable than the first. By Bayes’s theorem its probability is 1 /3. Joseph Bertrand, a  mathematician, published the paradox in Calcul des probabilités Calculus of Probabilities, 9. 

Bertrand’s paradox: an inconsistency arising from the classical definition of an event’s probability as the number of favorable cases divided by the number of possible cases. Given a circle, a chord is selected at random. What is the probability that the chord is longer than a side of an equilateral triangle inscribed in the circle? The event has these characterizations: 1 the apex angle of an isosceles triangle inscribed in the circle and having the chord as a leg is less than 60°, 2 the chord intersects the diameter perpendicular to it less than ½ a radius from the circle’s center, and 3 the chord’s midpoint lies within a circle concentric with the original and of ¼ its area. The definition thus suggests that the event’s probability is 1 /3, 1 /2, and also ¼. Joseph Bertrand, a  mathematician, published the paradox in Calcul des probabilités 9. 

Beth’s definability theorem: Grice loved an emplicit definition. a theorem for first-order logic. A theory defines a term t implicitly if and only if an explicit definition of the term, on the basis of the other primitive concepts, is entailed by the theory. A theory defines a term implicitly if any two models of the theory with the same domain and the same extension for the other primitive terms are identical, i.e., also have the same extension for the term. An explicit definition of a term is a sentence that states necessary and sufficient conditions for the term’s applicability. Beth’s theorem was implicit in a method to show independence of a term that was first used by the  logician Alessandro Padoa. Padoa suggested, in 0, that independence of a primitive algebraic term from the other terms occurring in a set of axioms can be established by two true interpretations of the axioms that differ only in the interpretation of the term whose independence has to be proven. He claimed, without proof, that the existence of two such models is not only sufficient for, but also implied by, independence. Tarski first gave a proof of Beth’s theorem in 6 for the logic of the Principia Mathematica of Whitehead and Russell, but the result was only obtained for first-order logic in 3 by E. Beth. In modern expositions Beth’s theorem is a direct implication of Craig’s interpolation theorem. In a variation on Padoa’s method, Karel de Bouvère described in 9 a one-model method to show indefinability: if the set of logical consequences of a theory formulated in terms of the remaining vocabulary cannot be extended to a model of the full theory, a term is not explicitly definable in terms of the remaining vocabulary. In the philosophy of science literature this is called a failure of Ramsey-eliminability of the term. 

bi-conditional: As Grice notes, ‘if’ is the only non-commutative operator; so trust Mill to make it commutative, “if p, q, then if q, p.” Cited by Strawson after ‘if,’ but dismissed by Grice in  his list of ‘formal devices’ as ‘too obvious.’ --  the logical operator, usually written with a triple-bar sign S or a doubleheaded arrow Q, used to indicate that two propositions have the same truth-value: that either both are true or else both are false. The term also designates a proposition having this sign, or a natural language expression of it, as its main connective; e.g., P if and only if Q. The truth table for the biconditional is The biconditional is so called because its application is logically equivalent to the conjunction ‘P-conditional-Q-and-Q-conditional-P’.  According to Pears, and rightly, too, ‘if’ conversationally implicates ‘iff.’

black box – used by Grice in his method in philosophical psychology -- a hypothetical unit specified only by functional role, in order to explain some effect or behavior. The term may refer to a single entity with an unknown structure, or unknown internal organization, which realizes some known function, or to any one of a system of such entities, whose organization and functions are inferred from the behavior of an organism or entity of which they are constituents. Within behaviorism and classical learning theory, the basic functions were taken to be generalized mechanisms governing the relationship of stimulus to response, including reinforcement, inhibition, extinction, and arousal. The organism was treated as a black box realizing these functions. Within cybernetics, though there are no simple inputoutput rules describing the organism, there is an emphasis on functional organization and feedback in controlling behavior. The components within a cybernetic system are treated as black boxes. In both cases, the details of underlying structure, mechanism, and dynamics are either unknown or regarded as unimportant. 

Blackburn’s skull. Blackburn's "one-off predicament" of communicating without a shared language illustrates how Grice's theory can be applied to iconic signals such as the drawing of a skull to wam of danger. See his Spreading the Word. III. 112.

blindsight: studied by Grice and Warnock, “Visa.” -- a residual visual capacity resulting from lesions in certain areas of the brain the striate cortex, area 17. Under routine clinical testing, persons suffering such lesions appear to be densely blind in particular regions of the visual field. Researchers have long recognized that, in primates, comparable lesions do not result in similar deficits. It has seemed unlikely that this disparity could be due to differences in brain function, however. And, indeed, when human subjects are tested in the way non-human subjects are tested, the disparity vanishes. Although subjects report that they can detect nothing in the blind field, when required to “guess” at properties of items situated there, they perform remarkably well. They seem to “know” the contents of the blind field while remaining unaware that they know, often expressing astonishment on being told the results of testing in the blind field. 

bloch: e., philosopher studied by H. P. Grice for his “ontological marxism.” influenced by Marxism, his views went beyond Marxism as he matured. He fled G.y in the 0s, but returned after World War II to a professorship in East G.y, where his increasingly unorthodox ideas were eventually censured by the Communist authorities, forcing a move to West G.y in the 0s. His major work, The Principle of Hope 459, is influenced by G. idealism, Jewish mysticism, Neoplatonism, utopianism, and numerous other sources besides Marxism. Humans are essentially unfinished, moved by a cosmic impulse, “hope,” a tendency in them to strive for the as-yet-unrealized, which manifests itself as utopia, or vision of future possibilities. Despite his atheism, Bloch wished to retrieve the sense of self-transcending that he saw in the religious and mythical traditions of humankind. His ideas have consequently influenced theology as well as philosophy, e.g. the “theology of hope” of Jurgen Moltmann.

blondel: m. cf. Hampshire, “Thought and action,” philosopher who discovered the deist background of human action. In his main work, Action 3, 2d rev. ed. 0, Blondel held that action is part of the very nature of human beings and as such becomes an object of philosophy; through philosophy, action should find its meaning, i.e. realize itself rationally. An appropriate phenomenology of action through phenomenological description uncovers the phenomenal level of action but points beyond it. Such a supraphenomenal sense of action provides it a metaphysical status. This phenomenology of action rests on an immanent dialectics of action: a gap between the aim of the action and its realization. This gap, while dissatisfying to the actor, also drives him toward new activities. The only immanent solution of this dialectics and its consequences is a transcendent one. We have to realize that we, like other humans, cannot grasp our own activities and must accept our limitations and our finitude as well as the insufficiency of our philosophy, which is now understood as a philosophy of insufficiency and points toward the existence of the supernatural element in every human act, namely God. Human activity is the outcome of divine grace. Through action bit Blondel, Maurice 90   90 one touches the existence of God, something not possible by logical argumentation. In the later phase of his development Blondel deserted his early “anti-intellectualism” and stressed the close relation between thought and action, now understood as inseparable and mutually interrelated. He came to see philosophy as a rational instrument of understanding one’s actions as well as one’s insufficiency.

Bobbio: essential Italian philosopher, who’s written on Fregeian sense ‘senso,’ – the need for sense – the search for sense, meaning meaning. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Bobbio," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

Bodei: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Bodei," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

bodin: j., Discussed by H. P. Grice in his exploration on legal versus moral right. -- philosopher whose philosophy centers on the concept of sovereignty. His Six livres de la république 1577 defines a state as constituted by common public interests, families, and the sovereign. The sovereign is the lawgiver, who stands beyond the absolute rights he possesses; he must, however, follow the law of God, natural law, and the constitution. The ideal state was for Bodin a monarchy that uses aristocratic and democratic structures of government for the sake of the common good. In order to achieve a broader empirical picture of politics Bodin used historical comparisons. This is methodologically reflected in his Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem 1566. Bodin was clearly a theorist of absolutism. As a member of the Politique group he played a practical role in emancipating the state from the church. His thinking was influenced by his experience of civil war. In his Heptaplomeres posthumous he pleaded for tolerance with respect to all religions, including Islam and Judaism. As a public prosecutor, however, he wrote a manual for judges in witchcraft trials De la démonomanie des sorciers, 1580. By stressing the peacemaking role of a strong state Bodin was a forerunner of Hobbes. 

boehme: j. Cited by Grice in “From Genesis to Revelations” -- protestant speculative mystic. Influenced especially by Paracelsus, Boehme received little formal education, but was successful enough as a shoemaker to devote himself to his writing, explicating his religious experiences. He published little in his lifetime, though enough to attract charges of heresy from local clergy. He did gather followers, and his works were published after his death. His writings are elaborately symbolic rather than argumentative, but respond deeply to fundamental problems in the Christian worldview. He holds that the Godhead, omnipotent will, is as nothing to us, since we can in no way grasp it. The Mysterium Magnum, the ideal world, is conceived in God’s mind through an impulse to self-revelation. The actual world, separate from God, is created through His will, and seeks to return to the peace of the Godhead. The world is good, as God is, but its goodness falls away, and is restored at the end of history, though not entirely, for some souls are damned eternally. Human beings enjoy free will, and create themselves through rebirth in faith. The Fall is necessary for the selfknowledge gained in recovery from it. Recognition of one’s hidden, free self is a recognition of God manifested in the world, so that human salvation completes God’s act of self-revelation. It is also a recognition of evil rooted in the blind will underlying all individual existence, without which there would be nothing except the Godhead. Boehme’s works influenced Hegel and the later Schelling. 

boezio: Possibly the most important Italian philosopher of all time. Grice loved Boethius – “He made Aristotle intelligible at Clifton!” -- Anicius Manlius Severinus, Roman philosopher and Aristotelian translator and commentator. He was born into a wealthy patrician family in Rome and had a distinguished political career under the Ostrogothic king Theodoric before being arrested and executed on charges of treason. His logic and philosophical theology contain important contributions to the philosophy of the late classical and early medieval periods, and his translations of and commentaries on Aristotle profoundly influenced the history of philosophy, particularly in the medieval Latin West. His most famous work, The Consolation of Philosophy, composed during his imprisonment, is a moving reflection on the nature of human happiness and the problem of evil and contains classic discussions of providence, fate, chance, and the apparent incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free choice. He was known during his own lifetime, however, as a brilliant scholar whose knowledge of the Grecian language and ancient Grecian philosophy set him apart from his Latin contemporaries. He conceived his scholarly career as devoted to preserving and making accessible to the Latin West the great philosophical achievement of ancient Greece. To this end he announced an ambitious plan to translate into Latin and write commenbodily continuity Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus 91   91 taries on all of Plato and Aristotle, but it seems that he achieved this goal only for Aristotle’s Organon. His extant translations include Porphyry’s Isagoge an introduction to Aristotle’s Categories and Aristotle’s Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations. He wrote two commentaries on the Isagoge and On Interpretation and one on the Categories, and we have what appear to be his notes for a commentary on the Prior Analytics. His translation of the Posterior Analytics and his commentary on the Topics are lost. He also commented on Cicero’s Topica and wrote his own treatises on logic, including De syllogismis hypotheticis, De syllogismis categoricis, Introductio in categoricos syllogismos, De divisione, and De topicis differentiis, in which he elaborates and supplements Aristotelian logic. Boethius shared the common Neoplatonist view that the Platonist and Aristotelian systems could be harmonized by following Aristotle in logic and natural philosophy and Plato in metaphysics and theology. This plan for harmonization rests on a distinction between two kinds of forms: 1 forms that are conjoined with matter to constitute bodies  these, which he calls “images” imagines, correspond to the forms in Aristotle’s hylomorphic account of corporeal substances; and 2 forms that are pure and entirely separate from matter, corresponding to Plato’s ontologically separate Forms. He calls these “true forms” and “the forms themselves.” He holds that the former, “enmattered” forms depend for their being on the latter, pure forms. Boethius takes these three sorts of entities  bodies, enmattered forms, and separate forms  to be the respective objects of three different cognitive activities, which constitute the three branches of speculative philosophy. Natural philosophy is concerned with enmattered forms as enmattered, mathematics with enmattered forms considered apart from their matter though they cannot be separated from matter in actuality, and theology with the pure and separate forms. He thinks that the mental abstraction characteristic of mathematics is important for understanding the Peripatetic account of universals: the enmattered, particular forms found in sensible things can be considered as universal when they are considered apart from the matter in which they inhere though they cannot actually exist apart from matter. But he stops short of endorsing this moderately realist Aristotelian account of universals. His commitment to an ontology that includes not just Aristotelian natural forms but also Platonist Forms existing apart from matter implies a strong realist view of universals. With the exception of De fide catholica, which is a straightforward credal statement, Boethius’s theological treatises De Trinitate, Utrum Pater et Filius, Quomodo substantiae, and Contra Euthychen et Nestorium show his commitment to using logic and metaphysics, particularly the Aristotelian doctrines of the categories and predicables, to clarify and resolve issues in Christian theology. De Trinitate, e.g., includes a historically influential discussion of the Aristotelian categories and the applicability of various kinds of predicates to God. Running through these treatises is his view that predicates in the category of relation are unique by virtue of not always requiring for their applicability an ontological ground in the subjects to which they apply, a doctrine that gave rise to the common medieval distinction between so-called real and non-real relations. Regardless of the intrinsic significance of Boethius’s philosophical ideas, he stands as a monumental figure in the history of medieval philosophy rivaled in importance only by Aristotle and Augustine. Until the recovery of the works of Aristotle in the mid-twelfth century, medieval philosophers depended almost entirely on Boethius’s translations and commentaries for their knowledge of pagan ancient philosophy, and his treatises on logic continued to be influential throughout the Middle Ages. The preoccupation of early medieval philosophers with logic and with the problem of universals in particular is due largely to their having been tutored by Boethius and Boethius’s Aristotle. The theological treatises also received wide attention in the Middle Ages, giving rise to a commentary tradition extending from the ninth century through the Renaissance and shaping discussion of central theological doctrines such as the Trinity and Incarnation. Refs.: Boethiius, in Stanford Encyclopaedia. Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Boezio," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia. Bollettino della Società filosofica italiana.

Bollettino della Società filosofica italiana: the name is telling, this is a Bulletin of the Italian Philosophical Society. Oddly, there is no English Philosophical Society. Grice belonged to the OXFORD philosophical society. While there is Società filosofica at Bologna, the world’s oldest varsity, Bologna was never too strong in philosophy – when Italian philosophers preferred to teach directly to Parisians!

boltzmann: cited by Grice in his discussion of “Eddington’s Two Tables” -- physicist who was a spirited advocate of the atomic theory and a pioneer in developing the kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics. Boltzmann’s most famous achievements were the transport equation, the H-theorem, and the probabilistic interpretation of entropy. This work is summarized in his Vorlesungen über Gastheorie “Lectures on the Theory of Gases,” 698. He held chairs in physics at the universities of Graz, Vienna, Munich, and Leipzig before returning to Vienna as professor of theoretical physics in 2. In 3 he succeeded Mach at Boltzmann, Ludwig Boltzmann, Ludwig 92   92 Vienna and lectured on the philosophy of science. In the 0s the atomic-kinetic theory was attacked by Mach and by the energeticists led by Wilhelm Ostwald. Boltzmann’s counterattack can be found in his Populäre Schriften “Popular Writings,” 5. Boltzmann agreed with his critics that many of his mechanical models of gas molecules could not be true but, like Maxwell, defended models as invaluable heuristic tools. Boltzmann also insisted that it was futile to try to eliminate all metaphysical pictures from theories in favor of bare equations. For Boltzmann, the goal of physics is not merely the discovery of equations but the construction of a coherent picture of reality. Boltzmann defended his H-theorem against the reversibility objection of Loschmidt and the recurrence objection of Zermelo by conceding that a spontaneous decrease in entropy was possible but extremely unlikely. Boltzmann’s views that irreversibility depends on the probability of initial conditions and that entropy increase determines the direction of time are defended by Reichenbach in The Direction of Time 6. 

bolzano: b., an intentionalist philosopher considered by most as a pre-Griceian, philosopher. He studied philosophy, mathematics, physics, and theology in Prague; received the Ph.D.; was ordained a priest 1805; was appointed to a chair in religion at Charles  in 1806; and, owing to his criticism of the Austrian constitution, was dismissed in 1819. He composed his two main works from 1823 through 1841: the Wissenschaftslehre 4 vols., 1837 and the posthumous Grössenlehre. His ontology and logical semantics influenced Husserl and, indirectly, Lukasiewicz, Tarski, and others of the Warsaw School. His conception of ethics and social philosophy affected both the cultural life of Bohemia and the Austrian system of education. Bolzano recognized a profound distinction between the actual thoughts and judgments Urteile of human beings, their linguistic expressions, and the abstract propositions Sätze an sich and their parts which exist independently of those thoughts, judgments, and expressions. A proposition in Bolzano’s sense is a preexistent sequence of ideas-as-such Vorstellungen an sich. Only propositions containing finite ideas-as-such are accessible to the mind. Real things existing concretely in space and time have subsistence Dasein whereas abstract objects such as propositions have only logical existence. Adherences, i.e., forces, applied to certain concrete substances give rise to subjective ideas, thoughts, or judgments. A subjective idea is a part of a judgment that is not itself a judgment. The set of judgments is ordered by a causal relation. Bolzano’s abstract world is constituted of sets, ideas-as-such, certain properties Beschaffenheiten, and objects constructed from these. Thus, sentence shapes are a kind of ideas-as-such, and certain complexes of ideas-as-such constitute propositions. Ideas-as-such can be generated from expressions of a language by postulates for the relation of being an object of something. Analogously, properties can be generated by postulates for the relation of something being applied to an object. Bolzano’s notion of religion is based on his distinction between propositions and judgments. His Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft 4 vols., 1834 distinguishes between religion in the objective and subjective senses. The former is a set of religious propositions, whereas the latter is the set of religious views of a single person. Hence, a subjective religion can contain an objective one. By defining a religious proposition as being moral and imperatives the rules of utilitarianism, Bolzano integrated his notion of religion within his ontology. In the Grössenlehre Bolzano intended to give a detailed, well-founded exposition of contemporary mathematics and also to inaugurate new domains of research. Natural numbers are defined, half a century before Frege, as properties of “bijective” sets the members of which can be put in one-to-one correspondence, and real numbers are conceived as properties of sets of certain infinite sequences of rational numbers. The analysis of infinite sets brought him to reject the Euclidean doctrine that the whole is always greater than any of its parts and, hence, to the insight that a set is infinite if and only if it is bijective to a proper subset of itself. This anticipates Peirce and Dedekind. Bolzano’s extension of the linear continuum of finite numbers by infinitesimals implies a relatively constructive approach to nonstandard analysis. In the development of standard analysis the most remarkable result of the Grössenlehre is the anticipation of Weirstrass’s discovery that there exist nowhere differentiable continuous functions. The Wissenschaftslehre was intended to lay the logical and epistemological foundations of Bolzano’s mathematics. A theory of science in Bolzano’s sense is a collection of rules for delimiting the set of scientific textbooks. Whether a Bolzano, Bernard Bolzano, Bernard 93   93 class of true propositions is a worthwhile object of representation in a scientific textbook is an ethical question decidable on utilitarian principles. Bolzano proceeded from an expanded and standardized ordinary language through which he could describe propositions and their parts. He defined the semantic notion of truth and introduced the function corresponding to a “replacement” operation on propositions. One of his major achievements was his definition of logical derivability logische Ableitbarkeit between sets of propositions: B is logically derivable from A if and only if all elements of the sum of A and B are simultaneously true for some replacement of their non-logical ideas-as-such and if all elements of B are true for any such replacement that makes all elements of A true. In addition to this notion, which is similar to Tarski’s concept of consequence of 6, Bolzano introduced a notion corresponding to Gentzen’s concept of consequence. A proposition is universally valid allgemeingültig if it is derivable from the null class. In his proof theory Bolzano formulated counterparts to Gentzen’s cut rule. Bolzano introduced a notion of inductive probability as a generalization of derivability in a limited domain. This notion has the formal properties of conditional probability. These features and Bolzano’s characterization of probability density by the technique of variation are reminiscent of Vitters’s inductive logic and Carnap’s theory of regular confirmation functions. The replacement of conceptual complexes in propositions would, if applied to a formalized language, correspond closely to a substitutionsemantic conception of quantification. His own philosophical language was based on a kind of free logic. In essence, Bolzano characterized a substitution-semantic notion of consequence with a finite number of antecedents. His quantification over individual and general concepts amounts to the introduction of a non-elementary logic of lowest order containing a quantification theory of predicate variables but no set-theoretical principles such as choice axioms. His conception of universal validity and of the semantic superstructure of logic leads to a semantically adequate extension of the predicate-logical version of Lewis’s system S5 of modal logic without paradoxes. It is also possible to simulate Bolzano’s theory of probability in a substitution-semantically constructed theory of probability functions. Hence, by means of an ontologically parsimonious superstructure without possible-worlds metaphysics, Bolzano was able to delimit essentially the realms of classical logical truth and additive probability spaces. In geometry Bolzano created a new foundation from a topological point of view. He defined the notion of an isolated point of a set in a way reminiscent of the notion of a point at which a set is well-dimensional in the sense of Urysohn and Menger. On this basis he introduced his topological notion of a continuum and formulated a recursive definition of the dimensionality of non-empty subsets of the Euclidean 3-space, which is closely related to the inductive dimension concept of Urysohn and Menger. In a remarkable paragraph of an unfinished late manuscript on geometry he stated the celebrated curve theorem of Jordan. 

bonaria – a church on an Italian island – Grice sailed there during his Grand Tour to Italy and Greece. He loved it! And he loved reading the Latin inscriptions and practicing the Latin he had learned at Clifton.  H. P. Grice was going to visit the River Plate with Noel Coward, but he got sick -- – or South American philosophy – “Bonaria” was settled by Italians after the matron saint of sailors, “Bonaria,” – itself settled by Ligurians, the first Italians to settle in Buenos Aires and the Argentine area of the River Plate -- the philosophy of South America, which is European in origin and constitutes a chapter in the history of Western philosophy (rather than  say, Japanese – there was a strong emigration of Japanese to Buenos Aires, but they remained mainly in the dry laundry business). Pre-Columbian (“Indian”) indigenous cultures had developed ideas about the world that have been interpreted by some scholars as philosophical, but there is no evidence that any of those ideas were incorporated into the philosophy later practiced in Latin America. It is difficult to characterize Latin American philosophy in a way applicable to all of its 500-year history. The most one can say is that, in contrast with European and Anglo-American philosophy, it has maintained a strong human and social interest, has been consistently affected by Scholastic and Catholic thought, and has significantly affected the social and political institutions in the region. South American philosophers (especially if NOT from Buenos Aires) tend to be active in the educational, political, and social lives of their countries and deeply concerned with their own cultural identity (except if they are from Buenos Aires, who have their identity well settled in Europe, as European exiles or expatriates that that they are) The history of philosophy in Latin America can be divided into four periods: colonial, independentist, positivist, and contemporary. Colonial period (c.1550–c.1750). This period was dominated by the type of Scholasticism officially practiced in the Iberian peninsula. The texts studied were those of medieval Scholastics, primarily Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and of their Iberian commentators, Vitoria, Soto, Fonseca, and, above all, Suárez. The university curriculum was modeled on that of major Iberian universities (Salamanca, Alcalá, Coimbra), and instructors produced both systematic treatises and commentaries on classical, medieval, and contemporary texts. The philosophical concerns in the colonies were those prevalent in Spain and Portugal and centered on logical and metaphysical issues inherited from the Middle Ages and on political and legal questions raised by the discovery and colonization of America. Among the former were issues involving the logic of terms and propositions and the problems of universals and individuation; among the latter were questions concerning the rights of Indians and the relations of the natives with the conquerors. The main philosophical center during the early colonial period was Mexico; Peru became important in the seventeenth century. Between 1700 and 1750 other centers developed, but by that time Scholasticism had begun to decline. The founding of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico in 1553 inaugurated Scholastic instruction in the New World. The first teacher of philosophy at the university was Alonso de la Vera Cruz (c.1504–84), an Augustinian and disciple of Soto. He composed several didactic treatises on La Peyrère, Isaac Latin American philosophy 483 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 483 logic, metaphysics, and science, including Recognitio summularum (“Introductory Logic,” 1554), Dialectica resolutio (“Advanced Logic,” 1554), and Physica speculatio (“Physics,” 1557). He also wrote a theologico-legal work, the Speculum conjugiorum (“On Marriage,” 1572), concerned with the status of precolonial Indian marriages. Alonso’s works are eclectic and didactic and show the influence of Aristotle, Peter of Spain, and Vitoria in particular. Another important Scholastic figure in Mexico was the Dominican Tomás de Mercado (c.1530–75). He produced commentaries on the logical works of Peter of Spain and Aristotle and a treatise on international commerce, Summa de tratos y contratos (“On Contracts,” 1569). His other sources are Porphyry and Aquinas. Perhaps the most important figure of the period was Antonio Rubio (1548–1615), author of the most celebrated Scholastic book written in the New World, Logica mexicana (“Mexican Logic,” 1605). It underwent seven editions in Europe and became a logic textbook in Alcalá. Rubio’s sources are Aristotle, Porphyry, and Aquinas, but he presents original treatments of several logical topics. Rubio also commented on several of Aristotle’s other works. In Peru, two authors merit mention. Juan Pérez Menacho (1565–1626) was a prolific writer, but only a moral treatise, Theologia et moralis tractatus (“Treatise on Theology and Morals”), and a commentary on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae remain. The Chilean-born Franciscan, Alfonso Briceño (c.1587–1669), worked in Nicaragua and Venezuela, but the center of his activities was Lima. In contrast with the Aristotelian-Thomistic flavor of the philosophy of most of his contemporaries, Briceño was a Scotistic Augustinian. This is evident in Celebriores controversias in primum sententiarum Scoti (“On Scotus’s First Book of the Sentences,” 1638) and Apologia de vita et doctrina Joannis Scotti (“Apology for John Scotus,” 1642). Although Scholasticism dominated the intellectual life of colonial Latin America, some authors were also influenced by humanism. Among the most important in Mexico were Juan de Zumárraga (c.1468–1548); the celebrated defender of the Indians, Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566); Carlos Sigüenza y Góngora (1645–1700); and Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1651–95). The last one is a famous poet, now considered a precursor of the feminist movement. In Peru, Nicolás de Olea (1635–1705) stands out. Most of these authors were trained in Scholasticism but incorporated the concerns and ideas of humanists into their work. Independentist period (c.1750–c.1850). Just before and immediately after independence, leading Latin American intellectuals lost interest in Scholastic issues and became interested in social and political questions, although they did not completely abandon Scholastic sources. Indeed, the theories of natural law they inherited from Vitoria and Suárez played a significant role in forming their ideas. But they also absorbed non-Scholastic European authors. The rationalism of Descartes and other Continental philosophers, together with the empiricism of Locke, the social ideas of Rousseau, the ethical views of Bentham, the skepticism of Voltaire and other Encyclopedists, the political views of Condorcet and Montesquieu, the eclecticism of Cousin, and the ideology of Destutt de Tracy, all contributed to the development of liberal ideas that were a background to the independentist movement. Most of the intellectual leaders of this movement were men of action who used ideas for practical ends, and their views have limited theoretical value. They made reason a measure of legitimacy in social and governmental matters, and found the justification for revolutionary ideas in natural law. Moreover, they criticized authority; some, regarding religion as superstitious, opposed ecclesiastical power. These ideas paved the way for the later development of positivism. The period begins with the weakening hold of Scholasticism on Latin American intellectuals and the growing influence of early modern philosophy, particularly Descartes. Among the first authors to turn to modern philosophy was Juan Benito Díaz de Gamarra y Dávalos (1745–83) in Mexico who wrote Errores del entendimiento humano (“Errors of Human Understanding,” 1781) and Academias filosóficas (“Philosophical Academies,” 1774). Also in Mexico was Francisco Javier Clavijero (1731–87), author of a book on physics and a general history of Mexico. In Brazil the turn away from Scholasticism took longer. One of the first authors to show the influence of modern philosophy was Francisco de Mont’Alverne (1784– 1858) in Compêndio de filosofia (1883). These first departures from Scholasticism were followed by the more consistent efforts of those directly involved in the independentist movement. Among these were Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), leader of the rebellion against Spain in the Andean countries of South America, and the Mexicans Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (1753– 1811), José María Morelos y Paván (1765– 1815), and José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi Latin American philosophy Latin American philosophy 484 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 484 (1776–1827). In Argentina, Mariano Moreno (1778–1811), Juan Crisóstomo Lafimur (d. 1823), and Diego Alcorta (d. 1808), among others, spread the liberal ideas that served as a background for independence. Positivist period (c.1850–c.1910). During this time, positivism became not only the most popular philosophy in Latin America but also the official philosophy of some countries. After 1910, however, positivism declined drastically. Latin American positivism was eclectic, influenced by a variety of thinkers, including Comte, Spencer, and Haeckel. Positivists emphasized the explicative value of empirical science while rejecting metaphysics. According to them, all knowledge is based on experience rather than theoretical speculation, and its value lies in its practical applications. Their motto, preserved on the Brazilian flag, was “Order and Progress.” This positivism left little room for freedom and values; the universe moved inexorably according to mechanistic laws. Positivism was a natural extension of the ideas of the independentists. It was, in part, a response to the needs of the newly liberated countries of Latin America. After independence, the concerns of Latin American intellectuals shifted from political liberation to order, justice, and progress. The beginning of positivism can be traced to the time when Latin America, responding to these concerns, turned to the views of French socialists such as Saint-Simon and Fourier. The Argentinians Esteban Echevarría (1805–51) and Juan Bautista Alberdi (1812–84) were influenced by them. Echevarría’s Dogma socialista (“Socialist Dogma,” 1846) combines socialist ideas with eighteenth-century rationalism and literary Romanticism, and Alberdi follows suit, although he eventually turned toward Comte. Alberdi is, moreover, the first Latin American philosopher to worry about developing a philosophy adequate to the needs of Latin America. In Ideas (1842), he stated that philosophy in Latin America should be compatible with the economic, political, and social requirements of the region. Another transitional thinker, influenced by both Scottish philosophy and British empiricism, was the Venezuelan Andrés Bello (1781–1865). A prolific writer, he is the most important Latin American philosopher of the nineteenth century. His Filosofía del entendimiento (“Philosophy of Understanding,” 1881) reduces metaphysics to psychology. Bello also developed original ideas about language and history. After 1829, he worked in Chile, where his influence was strongly felt. The generation of Latin American philosophers after Alberdi and Bello was mostly positivistic. Positivism’s heyday was the second half of the nineteenth century, but two of its most distinguished advocates, the Argentinian José Ingenieros (1877–1925) and the Cuban Enrique José Varona (1849–1933), worked well into the twentieth century. Both modified positivism in important ways. Ingenieros left room for metaphysics, which, according to him, deals in the realm of the “yet-to-be-experienced.” Among his most important books are Hacia una moral sin dogmas (“Toward a Morality without Dogmas,” 1917), where the influence of Emerson is evident, Principios de psicologia (“Principles of Psychology,” 1911), where he adopts a reductionist approach to psychology, and El hombre mediocre (“The Mediocre Man,” 1913), an inspirational book popular among Latin American youths. In Conferencias filosóficas (“Philosophical Lectures,” 1880–88), Varona went beyond the mechanistic explanations of behavior common among positivists. In Mexico the first and leading positivist was Gabino Barreda (1818–81), who reorganized Mexican education under President Juárez. An ardent follower of Comte, Barreda made positivism the basis of his educational reforms. He was followed by Justo Sierra (1848–1912), who turned toward Spencer and Darwin and away from Comte, criticizing Barreda’s dogmatism. Positivism was introduced in Brazil by Tobias Barreto (1839–89) and Silvio Romero (1851– 1914) in Pernambuco, around 1869. In 1875 Benjamin Constant (1836–91) founded the Positivist Society in Rio de Janeiro. The two most influential exponents of positivism in the country were Miguel Lemos (1854–1916) and Raimundo Teixeira Mendes (1855–1927), both orthodox followers of Comte. Positivism was more than a technical philosophy in Brazil. Its ideas spread widely, as is evident from the inclusion of positivist ideas in the first republican constitution. The most prominent Chilean positivists were José Victorino Lastarria (1817–88) and Valentín Letelier (1852–1919). More dogmatic adherents to the movement were the Lagarrigue brothers, Jorge (d. 1894), Juan Enrique (d. 1927), and Luis (d. 1953), who promoted positivism in Chile well after it had died everywhere else in Latin America. Contemporary period (c.1910–present). Contemporary Latin American philosophy began Latin American philosophy Latin American philosophy 485 4065h-l.qxd 08/02/1999 7:40 AM Page 485 with the demise of positivism. The first part of the period was dominated by thinkers who rebelled against positivism. The principal figures, called the Founders by Francisco Romero, were Alejandro Korn (1860–1936) in Argentina, Alejandro Octavio Deústua (1849–1945) in Peru, José Vasconcelos (1882–1959) and Antonio Caso (1883–1946) in Mexico, Enrique Molina (1871– 1964) in Chile, Carlos Vaz Ferreira (1872–1958) in Uruguay, and Raimundo de Farias Brito (1862–1917) in Brazil. In spite of little evidence of interaction among these philosophers, their aims and concerns were similar. Trained as positivists, they became dissatisfied with positivism’s dogmatic intransigence, mechanistic determinism, and emphasis on pragmatic values. Deústua mounted a detailed criticism of positivistic determinism in Las ideas de orden y de libertad en la historia del pensamiento humano (“The Ideas of Order and Freedom in the History of Human Thought,” 1917–19). About the same time, Caso presented his view of man as a spiritual reality that surpasses nature in La existencia como economía, como desinterés y como caridad (“Existence as Economy, Disinterestedness, and Charity,” 1916). Following in Caso’s footsteps and inspired by Pythagoras and the Neoplatonists, Vasconcelos developed a metaphysical system with aesthetic roots in El monismo estético (“Aesthetic Monism,” 1918). An even earlier criticism of positivism is found in Vaz Ferreira’s Lógica viva (“Living Logic,” 1910), which contrasts the abstract, scientific logic favored by positivists with a logic of life based on experience, which captures reality’s dynamic character. The earliest attempt at developing an alternative to positivism, however, is found in Farias Brito. Between 1895 and 1905 he published a trilogy, Finalidade do mundo (“The World’s Goal”), in which he conceived the world as an intellectual activity which he identified with God’s thought, and thus as essentially spiritual. The intellect unites and reflects reality but the will divides it. Positivism was superseded by the Founders with the help of ideas imported first from France and later from Germany. The process began with the influence of Étienne Boutroux (1845–1921) and Bergson and of French vitalism and intuitionism, but it was cemented when Ortega y Gasset introduced into Latin America the thought of Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, and other German philosophers during his visit to Argentina in 1916. The influence of Bergson was present in most of the founders, particularly Molina, who in 1916 wrote La filosofía de Bergson (“The Philosophy of Bergson”). Korn was exceptional in turning to Kant in his search for an alternative to positivism. In La libertad creadora (“Creative Freedom,” 1920–22), he defends a creative concept of freedom. In Axiología (“Axiology,” 1930), his most important work, he defends a subjectivist position. The impact of German philosophy, including Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the neo-Kantians, and of Ortega’s philosophical perspectivism and historicism, were strongly felt in the generation after the founders. The Mexican Samuel Ramos (1897–1959), the Argentinians Francisco Romero (1891–1962) and Carlos Astrada (1894–1970), the Brazilian Alceu Amoroso Lima (1893–1982), the Peruvian José Carlos Mariátegui (1895–1930), and others followed the Founders’ course, attacking positivism and favoring, in many instances, a philosophical style that contrasted with its scientistic emphasis. The most important of these figures was Romero, whose Theory of Man (1952) developed a systematic philosophical anthropology in the context of a metaphysics of transcendence. Reality is arranged according to degrees of transcendence, the lowest of which is the physical and the highest the spiritual. The bases of Ramos’s thought are found in Ortega as well as in Scheler and N. Hartmann. Ramos appropriated Ortega’s perspectivism and set out to characterize the Mexican situation in Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (1962). Some precedent existed for the interest in the culturally idiosyncratic in Vasconcelos’s Raza cósmica (“Cosmic Race,” 1925), but Ramos opened the doors to a philosophical awareness of Latin American culture that has been popular ever since. Ramos’s most traditional work, Hacia un nuevo humanismo (“Toward a New Humanism,” 1940), presents a philosophical anthropology of Orteguean inspiration. Astrada studied in Germany and adopted existential and phenomenological ideas in El juego existential (“The Existential Game,” 1933), while criticizing Scheler’s axiology. Later, he turned toward Hegel and Marx in Existencialismo y crisis de la filosofía (“Existentialism and the Crisis of Philosophy,” 1963). Amoroso Lima worked in the Catholic tradition and his writings show the influence of Maritain. His O espírito e o mundo (“Spirit and World,” 1936) and Idade, sexo e tempo (“Age, Sex, and Time,” 1938) present a spiritual view of human beings, which he contrasted with Marxist and existentialist views. Mariátegui is the most distinguished representative of MarxLatin American phiism in Latin America. His Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (“Seven Essays on the Interpretation of Peruvian Reality,” 1928) contains an important statement of social philosophy, in which he uses Marxist ideas freely to analyze the Peruvian sociopolitical situation. In the late 1930s and 1940s, as a consequence of the political upheaval created by the Spanish Civil War, a substantial group of peninsular philosophers settled in Latin America. Among the most influential were Joaquín Xirau (1895– 1946), Eduardo Nicol (b.1907), Luis Recaséns Siches (b.1903), Juan D. García Bacca (b.1901), and, perhaps most of all, José Gaos (1900–69). Gaos, like Caso, was a consummate teacher, inspiring many students. Apart from the European ideas they brought, these immigrants introduced methodologically more sophisticated ways of doing philosophy, including the practice of studying philosophical sources in the original languages. Moreover, they helped to promote Pan-American communication. The conception of hispanidad they had inherited from Unamuno and Ortega helped the process. Their influence was felt particularly by the generation born around 1910. With this generation, Latin American philosophy established itself as a professional and reputable discipline, and philosophical organizations, research centers, and journals sprang up. The core of this generation worked in the German tradition. Risieri Frondizi (Argentina, 1910–83), Eduardo García Máynez (Mexico, b.1908), Juan Llambías de Azevedo (Uruguay, 1907–72), and Miguel Reale (Brazil, b.1910) were all influenced by Scheler and N. Hartmann and concerned themselves with axiology and philosophical anthropology. Frondizi, who was also influenced by empiricist philosophy, defended a functional view of the self in Substancia y función en el problema del yo (“The Nature of the Self,” 1952) and of value as a Gestalt quality in Qué son los valores? (“What is Value?” 1958). Apart from these thinkers, there were representatives of other traditions in this generation. Following Ramos, Leopoldo Zea (Mexico, b.1912) stimulated the study of the history of ideas in Mexico and initiated a controversy that still rages concerning the identity and possibility of a truly Latin American philosophy. Representing existentialism was Vicente Ferreira da Silva (Brazil, b.1916), who did not write much but presented a vigorous criticism of what he regarded as Hegelian and Marxist subjectivism in Ensaios filosóficos (“Philosophical Essays,” 1948). Before he became interested in existentialism, he had been interested in logic, publishing the first textbook of mathematical logic written in South America – Elementos de lógica matemática (“Elements of Mathematical Logic,” 1940). A philosopher whose interest in mathematical logic moved him away from phenomenology is Francisco Miró Quesada (Peru, b.1918). He explored rationality and eventually the perspective of analytic philosophy. Owing to the influence of Maritain, several members of this generation adopted a NeoThomistic or Scholastic approach. The main figures to do so were Oswaldo Robles (b.1904) in Mexico, Octavio Nicolás Derisi (b.1907) in Argentina, Alberto Wagner de Reyna (b.1915) in Peru, and Clarence Finlayson (1913–54) in Chile and Colombia. Even those authors who worked in this tradition addressed issues of axiology and philosophical anthropology. There was, therefore, considerable thematic unity in South American philosophy. The overall orientation was not drastically different from the preceding period. The Founders vitalism against positivism, and the following generation, with Ortega’s help, took over the process, incorporating spiritualism and the new ideas introduced by phenomenology and existentialism to continue in a similar direction. As a result, the phenomenology amd existentialism dominated philosophy in South America. To this must be added the renewed impetus of neoScholasticism. Few philosophers worked outside these philosophical currents, and those who did had no institutional power. Among these were sympathizers of philosophical analysis, and those who contributed to the continuing development of Marxism. This situation has begun to change substantially as a result of a renewed interest in Marxism, the progressive influence of Oxford analytic philosophy (with a number of philosophers from Buenos Aires studying usually under British-Council scholarships, under P. F. Strawson, D. F. Pears, H. L. A. Hart, and others – these later founded the Buenos-Aires-based Argentine Society for Philosophical Analysis --. In Buenos Aires, English philosophy and culture in general is rated higher than others, due to the influence of the British emigration to the River-Plate area – The pragmatics of H. P. Grice is particularly influential in that it brings a breath of fresh area to the more ritualistic approach as favoured by his nemesis, J. L. Austin --. American philosophers are uually read provided they, too, had the proper Oxonian education or background -- and the development of a new philosophical current called the philosophy of liberation. Moreover, the question raised by Zea concerning the identity and possibility of a South American philosophy remains a focus of attention and controversy. And, more recently, there has been interest in postmodernism, the theory of communicative action, deconstructionism, neopragmatism, and feminism. Socialist thought is not new to South America. In this century, Emilio Frugoni (1880–1969) in Uruguay and Mariátegui in Peru, among others, adopted a Marxist perspective, although a heterodox one. But only in the last three decades has Marxism been taken seriously in Latin American academic circles. Indeed, until recently Marxism was a marginal philosophical movement in Latin America. The popularity of the Marxist perspective has made possible its increasing institutionalization. Among its most important thinkers are Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez (Spain, b.1915), Vicente Lombardo Toledano (b.1894) and Eli de Gortari (b.1918) in Mexico, and Caio Prado Júnior (1909–86) in Brazil. In contrast to Marxism, philosophical analysis arrived late in Latin America and, owing to its technical and academic character, has not yet influenced more than a relatively small number of philosophers – and also because in the milieu of Buenos Aires, the influence of French culture is considered to have much more prestige in mainstream culture than the more parochial empiricist brand coming from the British Isles – unless it’s among the Friends of the Argentine Centre for English Culture. German philosophy is considered rough in contrast to the pleasing to the ear sounds of French philosophy, and Buenos Aires locals find the very sound of the long German philosophical terms a source of amusement and mirth. Since Buenos Aires habitants are Italians, it is logical that they do not have much affinity for Italian philosophy, which they think it’s too local and less extravagant than the French. There was a strong immigration of German philosophers to Buenos Aires after the end of the Second World War, too. Colonials from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, or the former colonies in North America are never as welcomed in Buenos Aires as those from the very Old World. The reason is obvious: as being New-Worlders, if they are going to be educated, it is by Older-Worlders – Nobody in Buenos Aires would follow a New-World philosopher or a colonial philosopher – but at most a school which originated in the Continent of Europe. The British are regarded as by nature unphilosophical and to follow a British philosopher in Buenos Aires is considered an English joke! Nonetheless, and thanks in part to its high theoretical caliber, analysis has become one of the most forceful philosophical currents in the region. The publication of journals with an analytic bent such as Crítica in Mexico, Análisis Filosófico in Argentina, and Manuscrito in Brazil, the foundation of The Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico (SADAF) in Argentina and the Sociedad Filosófica Iberoamericana (SOFIA) in Mexico, and the growth of analytic publications in high-profile journals of neutral philosophical orientation, such as Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía, indicate that philosophical analysis is well established in at least the most European bit of the continent: the river Plate area of Buenos Aires. The main centers of analytic activity are Buenos Aires, on the River Plate, and far afterwards, the much less British-influenced centers like Mexico City, or the provincial varsity of Campinas and São Paulo in Brazil. The interests of South American philosophical analysts center on questions of pragmatics, rather than semantics, -- and are generally sympathetic to Griceian developments -- ethical and legal philosophy, the philosophy of science, and more recently cognitive science. Among its most important proponents are Genaro R. Carrio (b.1922), Gregorio Klimovsky (b.1922), and Tomas Moro Simpson (b.1929), E. A. Rabossi (b. Buenos Aires), O. N. Guariglia (b. Buenos Aires), in Argentina – Strawson was a frequent lecturer at the Argentine Society for Philosopohical Analysis, and many other Oxonian philosophers on sabbatical leave. The Argentine Society for Philosophical Analysis, usually in conjunction with the Belgravia-based Anglo-Argentine Society organize seminars and symposia – when an Argentine philosopher emigrates he ceases to be considered an Argentine philosopher – students who earn their maximal degrees overseas are not counted either as Argentine philosophers by Argentine (or specifically Buenos Aires) philosophers (They called them braindrained, brainwashed!) Luis Villoro (Spain, b. 1922) in Mexico; Francisco Miró Quesada in Peru; Roberto Torretti (Chile, b.1930) in Puerto Rico; Mario Bunge (Argentina, b.1919), who emigrated to Canada; and Héctor-Neri Castañeda (Guatemala, 1924–91). The philosophy of liberation is an autochthonous Latin American movement that mixes an emphasis on Latin American intellectual independence with Catholic and Marxist ideas. The historicist perspective of Leopoldo Zea, the movement known as the theology of liberation, and some elements from the national-popular Peronist ideology prepared the ground for it. The movement started in the early 1970s with a group of Argentinian philosophers, who, owing to the military repression of 1976–83 in Argentina, went into exile in various countries of Latin America. This early diaspora created permanent splits in the movement and spread its ideas throughout the region. Although proponents of this viewpoint do not always agree on their goals, they share the notion of liberation as a fundamental concept: the liberation from the slavery imposed on Latin America by imported ideologies and the development of a genuinely autochthonous thought resulting from reflection on the South American reality. As such, their views are an extension of the thought of Ramos and others who earlier in the century initiated the discussion of the cultural identity of South America.

bonum: One of the four transcendentals, along with ‘unum,’ ‘pulchrum,’ and ‘verum’. Grice makes fun of Hare n “Language of Morals.” To what extent is Hare saying that to say ‘x is good’ means ‘I approve of x’? (Strictly: “To say that something is good is to recommend it”). To say " I approve of x " is in part to do the same thing as when we say " x is good " a statement of the form " X is good" strictly designates " I approve of X " and suggests " Do so as well". It should be in Part II to “Language of Morals”. Old Romans did not have an article, so for them it is unum, bonum, verum, and pulchrum. They were trying to translate the very articled Grecian things, ‘to agathon,’ ‘to alethes,’ and ‘to kallon.’ The three references given by Liddell and Scott are good ones. τὸ ἀ., the good, Epich.171.5, cf. Pl.R.506b, 508e, Arist.Metaph.1091a31, etc. The Grecian Grice is able to return to the ‘article’. Grice has an early essay on ‘the good,’ and he uses the same expression at Oxford for the Locke lectures when looking for a ‘desiderative’ equivalent to ‘the true.’ Hare had dedicated the full part of his “Language of Morals” to ‘good,’ so Grice is well aware of the centrality of the topic. He was irritated by what he called a performatory approach to the good, where ‘x is good’ =df. ‘I approve of x.’ Surely that’s a conversational implicaturum. However, in his analysis of reasoning (the demonstratum – since he uses the adverb ‘demonstrably’ as a marker of pretty much like ‘concusively,’ as applied to both credibility and desirability, we may focus on what Grice sees as ‘bonum’ as one of the ‘absolutes,’ the absolute in the desirability realm, as much as the ‘verum’ is the absolute in the credibility realm. Grice has an excellent argument regarding ‘good.’ His example is ‘cabbage,’ but also ‘sentence.’ Grice’s argument is to turn the disimpicatum into an explicitum. To know what a ‘cabbage,’ or a formula is, you need to know first what a ‘good’ cabbage is or a ‘well-formed formula,’ is. An ill-formed sentence is not deemed by Grice a sentence. This means that we define ‘x’ as ‘optimum x.’ This is not so strange, seeing that ‘optimum’ is actually the superlative of ‘bonum’ (via the comparative). It does not require very sharp eyes, but only the willingness to use the eyes one has, to see that our speech and thought are permeated with the notion of purpose; to say what a certain kind of thing is is only too frequently partly to say what it is for. This feature applies to our talk and thought of, for example, ships, shoes, sealing wax, and kings; and, possibly and perhaps most excitingly, it extends even to cabbages.“There is a range of cases in which, so far from its being the case that, typically, one first learns what it is to be a F and then, at the next stage, learns what criteria distinguish a good F from a F which is less good, or not good at all, one needs first to learn what it is to be a good F, and then subsequently to learn what degree of approximation to being a good F will qualify an item as a F; if the gap between some item x and good Fs is sufficently horrendous, x is debarred from counting as a F at all, even as a bad F.”“In the John Locke Lectures, I called a concept which exhibits this feature as a ‘value-paradeigmatic’ concept. One example of a value-paradeigmatic concept is the concept of reasoning; another, I now suggest, is that of sentence. It may well be that the existence of value-oriented concepts (¢b ¢ 2 . • • . ¢n) depends on the prior existence of pre-rational concepts ( ¢~, ¢~ . . . . ¢~), such that an item x qualifies for the application of the concept ¢ 2 if and only if x satisfies a rationally-approved form or version of the corresponding pre-rational concept ¢'. We have a (primary) example of a step in reasoning only if we have a transition of a certain rationally approved kind from one thought or utterance to another. --- bonum commune -- common good, a normative standard in Thomistic and Neo-Thomistic ethics for evaluating the justice of social, legal, and political arrangements, referring to those arrangements that promote the full flourishing of everyone in the community. Every good can be regarded as both a goal to be sought and, when achieved, a source of human fulfillment. A common good is any good sought by and/or enjoyed by two or more persons as friendship is a good common to the friends; the common good is the good of a “perfect” i.e., complete and politically organized human community  a good that is the common goal of all who promote the justice of that community, as well as the common source of fulfillment of all who share in those just arrangements. ‘Common’ is an analogical term referring to kinds and degrees of sharing ranging from mere similarity to a deep ontological communion. Thus, any good that is a genuine perfection of our common human nature is a common good, as opposed to merely idiosyncratic or illusory goods. But goods are common in a deeper sense when the degree of sharing is more than merely coincidental: two children engaged in parallel play enjoy a good in common, but they realize a common good more fully by engaging each other in one game; similarly, if each in a group watches the same good movie alone at home, they have enjoyed a good in common but they realize this good at a deeper level when they watch the movie together in a theater and discuss it afterward. In short, common good includes aggregates of private, individual goods but transcends these aggregates by the unique fulfillment afforded by mutuality, shared activity, and communion of persons. As to the sources in Thomistic ethics for this emphasis on what is deeply shared over what merely coincides, the first is Aristotle’s understanding of us as social and political animals: many aspects of human perfection, on this view, can be achieved only through shared activities in communities, especially the political community. The second is Christian Trinitarian theology, in which the single Godhead involves the mysterious communion of three divine “persons,” the very exemplar of a common good; human personhood, by analogy, is similarly perfected only in a relationship of social communion. The achievement of such intimately shared goods requires very complex and delicate arrangements of coordination to prevent the exploitation and injustice that plague shared endeavors. The establishment and maintenance of these social, legal, and political arrangements is “the” common good of a political society, because the enjoyment of all goods is so dependent upon the quality and the justice of those arrangements. The common good of the political community includes, but is not limited to, public goods: goods characterized by non-rivalry and non-excludability and which, therefore, must generally be provided by public institutions. By the principle of subsidiarity, the common good is best promoted by, in addition to the state, many lower-level non-public societies, associations, and individuals. Thus, religiously affiliated schools educating non-religious minority chilcommission common good 161   161 dren might promote the common good without being public goods. 

booleian: algebra: Peirce was irritated by the spelling “Boolean” “Surely it is Booleian.” 1 an ordered triple B,†,3, where B is a set containing at least two elements and † and 3 are unary and binary operations in B such that i a 3 b % b 3 a, ii a 3 b 3 c % a 3 b 3 c, iii a 3 † a % b 3 † b, and iv a 3 b = a if and only if a 3 † b % a 3 † a; 2 the theboo-hurrah theory Boolean algebra 95   95 ory of such algebras. Such structures are modern descendants of algebras published by the mathematician G. Boole in 1847 and representing the first successful algebraic treatment of logic. Interpreting † and 3 as negation and conjunction, respectively, makes Boolean algebra a calculus of propositions. Likewise, if B % {T,F} and † and 3 are the truth-functions for negation and conjunction, then B,†,3  the truth table for those two connectives  forms a two-element Boolean algebra. Picturing a Boolean algebra is simple. B,†,3 is a full subset algebra if B is the set of all subsets of a given set and † and 3 are set complementation and intersection, respectively. Then every finite Boolean algebra is isomorphic to a full subset algebra, while every infinite Boolean algebra is isomorphic to a subalgebra of such an algebra. It is for this reason that Boolean algebra is often characterized as the calculus of classes. 

bootstrap: Grice certainly didn’t have a problem with meta-langauge paradoxes. Two of his maxims are self refuting and ‘sic’-ed: “be perspicuous [sic]” and “be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) [sic].” The principle introduced by Grice in “Prejudices and predilections; which become, the life and opinions of H. P. Grice,” to limit the power of the meta-language. The weaker your metalanguage the easier you’ll be able to pull yourself by your own bootstraps. He uses bootlaces in “Metaphysics, Philosophical Eschatology, and Plato’s Republic.”

border-line: case, in the logical sense, a case that falls within the “gray area” or “twilight zone” associated with a vague concept; in the pragmatic sense, a doubtful, disputed, or arguable case. These two senses are not mutually exclusive, of course. A moment of time near sunrise or sunset may be a borderline case of daytime or nighttime in the logical sense, but not in the pragmatic sense. A sufficiently freshly fertilized ovum may be a borderline case of a person in both senses. Fermat’s hypothesis, or any of a large number of other disputed mathematical propositions, may be a borderline case in the pragmatic sense but not in the logical sense. A borderline case per se in either sense need not be a limiting case or a degenerate case.

bosanquet:  b.: Cited by H. P. Grice. Very English philosopher (almost like Austin or Grice), the most systematic Oxford absolute idealist and, with F. H. Bradley, the leading Oxford defender of absolute idealism. Although he derived his last name from Huguenot ancestors, Bosanquet was thoroughly English. Born at Altwick and educated at Harrow and Balliol, Oxford, he was for eleven years a fellow of  University College, Oxford. The death of his father in 0 and the resulting inheritance enabled Bosanquet to leave Oxford for London and a career as a writer and social activist. While writing, he taught courses for the London Ethical Society’s Center for  Extension and donated time to the Charity Organization Society. In 5 he married his coworker in the Charity Organization Society, Helen Dendy, who was also the translator of Christoph Sigwart’s Logic. Bosanquet was professor of moral philosophy at St. Andrews from 3 to 8. He gave the Gifford Lectures in 1 and 2. Otherwise he lived in London until his death. Bosanquet’s most comprehensive work, his two-volume Gifford Lectures, The Principle of Individuality and Value and The Value and Destiny of the Individual, covers most aspects of his philosophy. In The Principle of Individuality and Value he argues that the search for truth proceeds by eliminating contradictions in experience. For Bosanquet a contradiction arises when there are incompatible interpretations of the same fact. This involves making distinctions that harmonize the incompatible interpretations in a larger body of knowledge. Bosanquet thought there was no way to arrest this process short of recognizing that all human experience forms a comprehensive whole which is reality. Bosanquet called this totality “the Absolute.” Just as conflicting interpretations of the same fact find harmonious places in the Absolute, so conflicting desires are also included. The Absolute thus satisfies all desires and provides Bosanquet’s standard for evaluating other objects. This is because in his view the value of an object is determined by its ability to satisfy desires. From this Bosanquet concluded that human beings, as fragments of the Absolute, acquire greater value as they realize themselves by partaking more fully in the Absolute. In The Value and Destiny of the Individual Bosanquet explained how human beings could do this. As finite, human beings face obstacles they cannot overcome; yet they desire the good i.e., the Absolute which for Bosanquet overcomes all obstacles and satisfies all desires. Humans can best realize a desire for the good, Bosanquet thinks, by surrendering their private desires for the sake of the good. This attitude of surrender, which Bosanquet calls the religious consciousness, relates human beings to what is permanently valuable in reality and increases their own value and satisfaction accordingly. Bosanquet’s defense of this metaphysical vision rests heavily on his first major work, Logic or the Morphology of Knowledge 8; 2d ed., 1. As the subtitle indicates, Bosanquet took the subject matter of Logic to be the structure of knowledge. Like Hegel, who was in many ways his inspiration, Bosanquet thought that the nature of knowledge was defined by structures repeated in different parts of knowledge. He called these structures forms of judgment and tried to show that simple judgments are dependent on increasingly complex ones and finally on an all-inclusive judgment that defines reality. For example, the simplest element of knowledge is a demonstrative judgment like “This is hot.” But making such a judgment presupposes understanding the contrast between ‘this’ and ‘that’. Demonstrative judgments thus depend on comparative judgments like “This is hotter than that.” Since these judgments are less dependent on other judgments, they more fully embody human knowledge. Bosanquet claimed that the series of increasingly complex judgments are not arranged in a simple linear order but develop along different branches finally uniting in disjunctive judgments that attribute to reality an exhaustive set of mutually exclusive alternatives which are themselves judgments. When one contained judgment is asserted on the basis of another, a judgment containing both is an inference. For Bosanquet inferences are mediated judgments that assert their conclusions based on grounds. When these grounds are made fully explicit in a judgment containing them, that judgment embodies the nature of inference: that one must accept the conclusion or reject the whole of knowledge. Since for Bosanquet the difference between any judgment and the reality it represents is that a judgment is composed of ideas that abstract from reality, a fully comprehensive judgment includes all aspects of reality. It is thus identical to reality. By locating all judgments within this one, Bosanquet claimed to have described the morphology of knowledge as well as to have shown that thought is identical to reality. Bosanquet removed an objection to this identification in History of Aesthetics 2, where he traces the development of the philosophy of the beautiful from its inception through absolute idealism. According to Plato and Aristotle beauty is found in imitations of reality, while in objective idealism it is reality in sensuous form. Drawing heavily on Kant, Bosanquet saw this process as an overcoming of the opposition between sense and reason by showing how a pleasurable feeling can partake of reason. He thought that absolute idealism explained this by showing that we experience objects as beautiful because their sensible qualities exhibit the unifying activity of reason. Bosanquet treated the political implications of absolute idealism in his Philosophical Theory of the State 8; 3d ed., 0, where he argues that humans achieve their ends only in communities. According to Bosanquet, all humans rationally will their own ends. Because their ends differ from moment to moment, the ends they rationally will are those that harmonize their desires at particular moments. Similarly, because the ends of different individuals overlap and conflict, what they rationally will are ends that harmonize their desires, which are the ends of humans in communities. They are willed by the general will, the realization of which is self-rule or liberty. This provides the rational ground of political obligation, since the most comprehensive system of modern life is the state, the end of which is the realization of the best life for its citizens. Refs.: H. P. Grice, “Bosanquet’s implicaturum.”

boscovich: An example of minimalism, according to Grice. Roger Joseph, or Rudjer Josip Bos v kovic’, philosopher. Born of Serbian and  parents, he was a Jesuit and polymath best known for his A Theory of Natural Philosophy Reduced to a Single Law of the Actions Existing in Nature. This work attempts to explain all physical phenomena in terms of the attractions and repulsions of point particles puncta that are indistinguishable in their intrinsic qualitative properties. According to Boscovich’s single law, puncta at a certain distance attract, until upon approaching one another they reach a point at which they repel, and eventually reach equilibrium. Thus, Boscovich defends a form of dynamism, or the theory that nature is to be understood in terms of force and not mass where forces are functions of time and distance. By dispensing with extended substance, Boscovich avoided epistemological difficulties facing Locke’s natural philosophy and anticipated developments in modern physics. Among those influenced by Boscovich were Kant who defended a version of dynamism, Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Lord Kelvin. Boscovich’s theory has proved to be empirically inadequate to account for phenomena such as light. A philosophical difficulty for Boscovich’s puncta, which are physical substances, arises out of their zero-dimensionality. It is plausible that any power must have a basis in an object’s intrinsic properties, and puncta appear to lack such support for their powers. However, it is extensional properties that puncta lack, and Boscovich could argue that the categorial property of being an unextended spatial substance provides the needed basis.

bouwsma: Gruce: “Philosopher almost impossible to pronounce.” -- o. k., philosopher, a practitioner of ordinary language philosophy and celebrated teacher. Through work on Moore and contact with students such as Norman Malcolm and Morris Lazerowitz, whom he sent from Nebraska to work with Moore, Bouwsma discovered Vitters. He became known for conveying an understanding of Vitters’s techniques of philosophical analysis through his own often humorous grasp of sense and nonsense. Focusing on a particular pivotal sentence in an argument, he provided imaginative surroundings for it, showing how, in the philosopher’s mouth, the sentence lacked sense. He sometimes described this as “the method of failure.” In connection with Descartes’s evil genius, e.g., Bouwsma invents an elaborate story in which the evil genius tries but fails to permanently deceive by means of a totally paper world. Our inability to imagine such a deception undermines the sense of the evil genius argument. His writings are replete with similar stories, analogies, and teases of sense and nonsense for such philosophical standards as Berkeley’s idealism, Moore’s theory of sensedata, and Anselm’s ontological argument. Bouwsma did not advocate theories nor put forward refutations of other philosophers’ views. His talent lay rather in exposing some central sentence in an argument as disguised nonsense. In this, he went beyond Vitters, working out the details of the latter’s insights into language. In addition to this appropriation of Vitters, Bouwsma also appropriated Kierkegaard, understanding him too as one who dispelled philosophical illusions  those arising from the attempt to understand Christianity. The ordinary language of religious philosophy was that of scriptures. He drew upon this language in his many essays on religious themes. His religious dimension made whole this person who gave no quarter to traditional metaphysics. His papers are published under the titles Philosophical Essays, Toward a New Sensibility, Without Proof or Evidence, and Vitters Conversations 951. His philosophical notebooks are housed at the Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas. 

boyle: r.: Grice was a closet corpularianist. a major figure in seventeenthcentury natural philosophy. To his contemporaries he was “the restorer” in England of the mechanical philosophy. His program was to replace the vacuous explanations characteristic of Peripateticism the “quality of whiteness” in snow explains why it dazzles the eyes by explanations employing the “two grand and most catholic principles of bodies, matter and motion,” matter being composed of corpuscles, with motion “the grand agent of all that happens in nature.” Boyle wrote influentially on scientific methodology, emphasizing experimentation a Baconian influence, experimental precision, and the importance of devising “good and excellent” hypotheses. The dispute with Spinoza on the validation of explanatory hypotheses contrasted Boyle’s experimental way with Spinoza’s way of rational analysis. The 1670s dispute with Henry More on the ontological grounds of corporeal activity confronted More’s “Spirit of Nature” with the “essential modifications” motion and the “seminal principle” of activity with which Boyle claimed God had directly endowed matter. As a champion of the corpuscularian philosophy, Boyle was an important link in the development before Locke of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. A leading advocate of natural theology, he provided in his will for the establishment of the Boyle Lectures to defend Protestant Christianity against atheism and materialism.

bradley: One of the few English philosophers who saw philosophy, correctly, as a branch of literature! (Essay-writing, strictly). f. h., Cited by H. P. Grice in “Prolegomena,” now repr. in “Studies in the Way of Words.” Also in Grice, “Metaphysics,” in D. F. Pears, “The nature of metaphysics,” -- the most original and influential nineteenth-century British idealist. Born at Clapham, he was the fourth son of an evangelical minister. His younger brother A. C. Bradley was a well-known Shakespearean critic. From 1870 until his death Bradley was a fellow of Merton , Oxford. A kidney ailment, which first occurred in 1871, compelled him to lead a retiring life. This, combined with his forceful literary style, his love of irony, the dedication of three of his books to an unknown woman, and acclaim as the greatest British idealist since Berkeley, has lent an aura of mystery to his personal life. The aim of Bradley’s first important work, Ethical Studies 1876, is not to offer guidance for dealing with practical moral problems Bradley condemned this as casuistry, but rather to explain what makes morality as embodied in the consciousness of individuals and in social institutions possible. Bradley thought it was the fact that moral agents take morality as an end in itself which involves identifying their wills with an ideal provided in part by their stations in society and then transferring that ideal to reality through action. Bradley called this process “selfrealization.” He thought that moral agents could realize their good selves only by suppressing their bad selves, from which he concluded that morality could never be completely realized, since realizing a good self requires having a bad one. For this reason Bradley believed that the moral consciousness would develop into religious consciousness which, in his secularized version of Christianity, required dying to one’s natural self through faith in the actual existence of the moral ideal. In Ethical Studies Bradley admitted that a full defense of his ethics would require a metaphysical system, something he did not then have. Much of Bradley’s remaining work was an attempt to provide the outline of such a system by solving what he called “the great problem of the relation between thought and reality.” He first confronted this problem in The Principles of Logic3, which is his description of thought. He took thought to be embodied in judgments, which are distinguished from other mental activities by being true or false. This is made possible by the fact that their contents, which Bradley called ideas, represent reality. A problem arises because ideas are universals and so represent kinds of things, while the things themselves are all individuals. Bradley solves this problem by distinguishing between the logical and grammatical forms of a judgment and arguing that all judgments have the logical form of conditionals. They assert that universal connections between qualities obtain in reality. The qualities are universals, the connections between them are conditional, while reality is one individual whole that we have contact with in immediate experience. All judgments, in his view, are abstractions from a diverse but non-relational immediate experience. Since judgments are inescapably relational, they fail to represent accurately non-relational reality and so fail to reach truth, which is the goal of thought. From this Bradley concluded that, contrary to what some of his more Hegelian contemporaries were saying, thought is not identical to reality and is never more than partially true. Appearance and Reality 3 is Bradley’s description of reality: it is experience, all of it, all at once, blended in a harmonious way. Bradley defended this view by means of his criterion for reality. Reality, he proclaimed, does not contradict itself; anything that does is merely appearance. In Part I of Appearance and Reality Bradley relied on an infinite regress argument, now called Bradley’s regress, to contend that relations and all relational phenomena, including thought, are contradictory. They are appearance, not reality. In Part II he claimed that appearances are contradictory because they are abstracted by thought from the immediate experience of which they are a part. Appearances constitute the content of this whole, which in Bradley’s view is experience. In other words, reality is experience in its totality. Bradley called this unified, consistent all-inclusive reality “the Absolute.” Today Bradley is mainly remembered for his argument against the reality of relations, and as the philosopher who provoked Russell’s and Moore’s revolution in philosophy. He would be better remembered as a founder of twentiethcentury philosophy who based metaphysical conclusions on his account of the logical forms of judgments. 

brandt:  R. B.,-- read by Grice for his ‘ideal observer theory” or creature construction in “Method” moral philosopher, most closely associated with rule utilitarianism which term he coined, earned degrees from Denison  and Cambridge , and obtained a Ph.D. from Yale in 6. He taught at Swarthmore  from 7 to 4 and at the  of Michigan from 4 to 1. His six books and nearly one hundred articles included work on philosophy of religion, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, political philosophy, and philosophy of law. His greatest contributions were in moral philosophy. He first defended rule utilitarianism in his textbook Ethical Theory 9, but greatly refined his view in the 0s in a series of articles, which were widely discussed and reprinted and eventually collected together in Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights 2. Further refinements appear in his A Theory of the Good and the Right 9 and Facts, Values, and Morality 6. Brandt famously argued for a “reforming definition” of ‘rational person’. He proposed that we use it to designate someone whose desires would survive exposure to all relevant empirical facts and to correct logical reasoning. He also proposed a “reforming definition” of ‘morally right’ that assigns it the descriptive meaning ‘would be permitted by any moral code that all or nearly all rational people would publicly favor for the agent’s society if they expected to spend a lifetime in that society’. In his view, rational choice between moral codes is determined not by prior moral commitments but by expected consequences. Brandt admitted that different rational people may favor different codes, since different rational people may have different levels of natural benevolence. But he also contended that most rational people would favor a rule-utilitarian code. 

brentano: f., philosopher, one of the most intellectually influential and personally charismatic of his time. He is known especially for his distinction between psychological and physical phenomena on the basis of intentionality or internal object-directedness of thought, his revival of Aristotelianism and empirical methods in philosophy and psychology, and his value theory and ethics supported by the concept of correct pro- and anti-emotions or love and hate attitudes. Brentano made noted contributions to the theory of metaphysical categories, phenomenology, epistemology, syllogistic logic, and philosophy of religion. His teaching made a profound impact on his students in Würzburg and Vienna, many of whom became internationally respected thinkers in their fields, including Meinong, Husserl, Twardowski, Christian von Ehrenfels, Anton Marty, and Freud. Brentano began his study of philosophy at the Aschaffenburg Royal Bavarian Gymnasium; in 185658 he attended the universities of Munich and Würzburg, and then enrolled at the  of Berlin, where he undertook his first investigations of Aristotle’s metaphysics under the supervision of F. A. Trendelenburg. In 1859 60, he attended the Academy in Münster, reading intensively in the medieval Aristotelians; in 1862 he received the doctorate in philosophy in absentia from the  of Tübingen. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1864, and was later involved in a controversy over the doctrine of papal infallibility, eventually leaving the church in 1873. He taught first as Privatdozent in the Philosophical Faculty of the  of Würzburg 186674, and then accepted a professorship at the  of Vienna. In 0 he decided to marry, temporarily resigning his position to acquire Saxon citizenship, in order to avoid legal difficulties in Austria, where marriages of former priests were not officially recognized. Brentano was promised restoration of his position after his circumvention of these restrictions, but although he was later reinstated as lecturer, his appeals for reappointment as professor were answered only with delay and equivocation. He left Vienna in 5, retiring to Italy, his family’s country of origin. At last he moved to Zürich, Switzerland, shortly before Italy entered World War I. Here he remained active both in philosophy and psychology, despite his ensuing blindness, writing and revising numerous books and articles, frequently meeting with former students and colleagues, and maintaining an extensive philosophical-literary correspondence, until his death. In Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt “Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,” 1874, Brentano argued that intentionality is the mark of the mental, that every psychological experience contains an intended object  also called an intentional object  which the thought is about or toward which the thought is directed. Thus, in desire, something is desired. According to the immanent intentionality thesis, this means that the desired object is literally contained within the psychological experience of desire. Brentano claims that this is uniquely true of mental as opposed to physical or non-psychological phenomena, so that the intentionality of the psychological distinguishes mental from physical states. The immanent intentionality thesis proBrentano, Franz Brentano, Franz 100   100 vides a framework in which Brentano identifies three categories of psychological phenomena: thoughts Vorstellungen, judgments, and emotive phenomena. He further maintains that every thought is also self-consciously reflected back onto itself as a secondary intended object in what he called the eigentümliche Verfleckung. From 5 through 1, with the publication in that year of Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene, Brentano gradually abandoned the immanent intentionality thesis in favor of his later philosophy of reism, according to which only individuals exist, excluding putative nonexistent irrealia, such as lacks, absences, and mere possibilities. In the meantime, his students Twardowski, Meinong, and Husserl, reacting negatively to the idealism, psychologism, and related philosophical problems apparent in the early immanent intentionality thesis, developed alternative non-immanence approaches to intentionality, leading, in the case of Twardowski and Meinong and his students in the Graz school of phenomenological psychology, to the construction of Gegenstandstheorie, the theory of transcendent existent and nonexistent intended objects, and to Husserl’s later transcendental phenomenology. The intentionality of the mental in Brentano’s revival of the medieval Aristotelian doctrine is one of his most important contributions to contemporary non-mechanistic theories of mind, meaning, and expression. Brentano’s immanent intentionality thesis was, however, rejected by philosophers who otherwise agreed with his underlying claim that thought is essentially object-directed. Brentano’s value theory Werttheorie offers a pluralistic account of value, permitting many different kinds of things to be valuable  although, in keeping with his later reism, he denies the existence of an abstract realm of values. Intrinsic value is objective rather than subjective, in the sense that he believes the pro- and anti-emotions we may have toward an act or situation are objectively correct if they present themselves to emotional preference with the same apodicity or unquestionable sense of rightness as other selfevident matters of non-ethical judgment. Among the controversial consequences of Brentano’s value theory is the conclusion that there can be no such thing as absolute evil. The implication follows from Brentano’s observation, first, that evil requires evil consciousness, and that consciousness of any kind, even the worst imaginable malice or malevolent ill will, is considered merely as consciousness intrinsically good. This means that necessarily there is always a mixture of intrinsic good even in the most malicious possible states of mind, by virtue alone of being consciously experienced, so that pure evil never obtains. Brentano’s value theory admits of no defense against those who happen not to share the same “correct” emotional attitudes toward the situations he describes. If it is objected that to another person’s emotional preferences only good consciousness is intrinsically good, while infinitely bad consciousness despite being a state of consciousness appears instead to contain no intrinsic good and is absolutely evil, there is no recourse within Brentano’s ethics except to acknowledge that this contrary emotive attitude toward infinitely bad consciousness may also be correct, even though it contradicts his evaluations. Brentano’s empirical psychology and articulation of the intentionality thesis, his moral philosophy and value theory, his investigations of Aristotle’s metaphysics at a time when Aristotelian realism was little appreciated in the prevailing climate of post-Kantian idealism, his epistemic theory of evident judgment, his suggestions for the reform of syllogistic logic, his treatment of the principle of sufficient reason and existence of God, his interpretation of a fourstage cycle of successive trends in the history of philosophy, together with his teaching and personal moral example, continue to inspire a variety of divergent philosophical traditions. 

broad: cited by H. P. Grice in “Personal identity” and “Prolegomena” (re: Benjamin on Broad on remembering). Charlie Dunbar 71, English epistemologist, metaphysician, moral philosopher, and philosopher of science. He was educated at Trinity , Cambridge, taught at several universities in Scotland, and then returned to Trinity, first as lecturer in moral science and eventually as Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy. His philosophical views are in the broadly realist tradition of Moore and Russell, though with substantial influence also from his teachers at Cambridge, McTaggart and W. E. Johnson. Broad wrote voluminously and incisively on an extremely wide range of philosophical topics, including most prominently the nature of perception, a priori knowledge and concepts, the problem of induction, the mind Brentano’s thesis Broad, Charlie Dunbar 101   101 body problem, the free will problem, various topics in moral philosophy, the nature and philosophical significance of psychical research, the nature of philosophy itself, and various historical figures such as Leibniz, Kant, and McTaggart. Broad’s work in the philosophy of perception centers on the nature of sense-data or sensa, as he calls them and their relation to physical objects. He defends a rather cautious, tentative version of the causal theory of perception. With regard to a priori knowledge, Broad rejects the empiricist view that all such knowledge is of analytic propositions, claiming instead that reason can intuit necessary and universal connections between properties or characteristics; his view of concept acquisition is that while most concepts are abstracted from experience, some are a priori, though not necessarily innate. Broad holds that the rationality of inductive inference depends on a further general premise about the world, a more complicated version of the thesis that nature is uniform, which is difficult to state precisely and even more difficult to justify. Broad’s view of the mindbody problem is a version of dualism, though one that places primary emphasis on individual mental events, is much more uncertain about the existence and nature of the mind as a substance, and is quite sympathetic to epiphenomenalism. His main contribution to the free will problem consists in an elaborate analysis of the libertarian conception of freedom, which he holds to be both impossible to realize and at the same time quite possibly an essential precondition of the ordinary conception of obligation. Broad’s work in ethics is diverse and difficult to summarize, but much of it centers on the issue of whether ethical judgments are genuinely cognitive in character. Broad was one of the few philosophers to take psychical research seriously. He served as president of the Society for Psychical Research and was an occasional observer of experiments in this area. His philosophical writings on this subject, while not uncritical, are in the main sympathetic and are largely concerned to defend concepts like precognition against charges of incoherence and also to draw out their implications for more familiar philosophical issues. As regards the nature of philosophy, Broad distinguishes between “critical” and “speculative” philosophy. Critical philosophy is analysis of the basic concepts of ordinary life and of science, roughly in the tradition of Moore and Russell. A very high proportion of Broad’s own work consists of such analyses, often amazingly detailed and meticulous in character. But he is also sympathetic to the speculative attempt to arrive at an overall conception of the nature of the universe and the position of human beings therein, while at the same time expressing doubts that anything even remotely approaching demonstration is possible in such endeavors. The foregoing catalog of views reveals something of the range of Broad’s philosophical thought, but it fails to bring out what is most strikingly valuable about it. Broad’s positions on various issues do not form anything like a system he himself is reported to have said that there is nothing that answers to the description “Broad’s philosophy”. While his views are invariably subtle, thoughtful, and critically penetrating, they rarely have the sort of one-sided novelty that has come to be so highly valued in philosophy. What they do have is exceptional clarity, dialectical insight, and even-handedness. Broad’s skill at uncovering and displaying the precise shape of a philosophical issue, clarifying the relevant arguments and objections, and cataloging in detail the merits and demerits of the opposing positions has rarely been equaled. One who seeks a clear-cut resolution of an issue is likely to be impatient and disappointed with Broad’s careful, measured discussions, in which unusual effort is made to accord all positions and arguments their due. But one who seeks a comprehensive and balanced understanding of the issue in question is unlikely to find a more trustworthy guide. 

brouwer: L. E. J: Discussed by H. P. Grice in connection with ‘intuititionist negation’ and the elimination of negation -- philosopher and founder of the intuitionist school in the philosophy of mathematics. Educated at the Municipal  of Amsterdam, where he received his doctorate in 7, he remained there for his entire professional career, as Privaat-Docent 912 and then professor 255. He was among the preeminent topologists of his time, proving several important results. Philosophically, he was also unique in his strongly held conviction that philosophical ideas and arguments concerning the nature of mathematics ought to affect and be reflected in its practice. His general orientation in the philosophy of mathematics was Kantian. This was manifested in his radical critique of the role accorded to logical reasoning by classical mathematics; a role that Brouwer, following Kant, believed to be incompatible with the role that intuition must properly play in mathematical reasoning. The bestknown, if not the most fundamental, part of his Brouwer, Luitzgen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, Luitzgen Egbertus Jan 102   102 critique of the role accorded to logic by classical mathematics was his attack on the principle of the excluded middle and related principles of classical logic. He challenged their reliability, arguing that their unrestricted use leads to results that, intuitionistically speaking, are not true. However, in its fundaments, Brouwer’s critique was not so much an attack on particular principles of classical logic as a criticism of the general role that classical mathematics grants to logical reasoning. He believed that logical structure and hence logical inference is a product of the linguistic representation of mathematical thought and not a feature of that thought itself. He stated this view in the so-called First Act of Intuitionism, which contains not only the chief critical idea of Brouwer’s position, but also its core positive element. This positive element says, with Kant, that mathematics is an essentially languageless activity of the mind. Brouwer went on to say something with which Kant would only have partially agreed: that this activity has its origin in the perception of a move of time. The critical element complements this by saying that mathematics is thus to be kept wholly distinct from mathematical language and the phenomena of language described by logic. The so-called Second Act of Intuitionism then extends the positive part of the First Act by stating that the “self-unfolding” of the primordial intuition of a move of time is the basis not only of the construction of the natural numbers but also of the intuitionistic continuum. Together, these two ideas form the basis of Brouwer’s philosophy of mathematics  a philosophy that is radically at odds with most of twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics. 

bruno: g., apeculative philosopher. He was born in Naples, where he entered the Dominican order in 1565. In 1576 he was suspected of heresy and abandoned his order. He studied and taught in Geneva, but left because of difficulties with the Calvinists. Thereafter he studied and taught in Toulouse, Paris, England, various G. universities, and Prague. In 1591 he rashly returned to Venice, and was arrested by the Venetian Inquisition in 1592. In 1593 he was handed over to the Roman Inquisition, which burned him to death as a heretic. Because of his unhappy end, his support for the Copernican heliocentric hypothesis, and his pronounced anti-Aristotelianism, Bruno has been mistakenly seen as the proponent of a scientific worldview against medieval obscurantism. In fact, he should be interpreted in the context of Renaissance hermetism. Indeed, Bruno was so impressed by the hermetic corpus, a body of writings attributed to the mythical Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, that he called for a return to the magical religion of the Egyptians. He was also strongly influenced by Lull, Nicholas of Cusa, Ficino, and Agrippa von Nettesheim, an early sixteenth-century author of an influential treatise on magic. Several of Bruno’s works were devoted to magic, and it plays an important role in his books on the art of memory. Techniques for improving the memory had long been a subject of discussion, but he linked them with the notion that one could so imprint images of the universe on the mind as to achieve special knowledge of divine realities and the magic powers associated with such knowledge. He emphasized the importance of the imagination as a cognitive power, since it brings us into contact with the divine. Nonetheless, he also held that human ideas are mere shadows of divine ideas, and that God is transcendent and hence incomprehensible. Bruno’s best-known works are the  dialogues he wrote while in England, including the following, all published in 1584: The Ash Wednesday Supper; On Cause, Principle and Unity; The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast; and On the Infinite Universe and Worlds. He presents a vision of the universe as a living and infinitely extended unity containing innumerable worlds, each of which is like a great animal with a life of its own. He maintained the unity of matter with universal form or the World-Soul, thus suggesting a kind of pantheism attractive to later G. idealists, such as Schelling. However, he never identified the World-Soul with God, who remained separate from matter and form. He combined his speculative philosophy of nature with the recommendation of a new naturalistic ethics. Bruno’s support of Copernicus in The Ash Wednesday Supper was related to his belief that a living earth must move, and he specifically rejected any appeal to mere mathematics to prove cosmological hypotheses. In later work he described the monad as a living version of the Democritean atom. Despite some obvious parallels with both Spinoza and Leibniz, he seems not to have had much direct influence on seventeenth-century thinkers.

brunschvicg, l.: H. P. Grice is very popular in France, and so is Brunschvicg, philosopher, an influential professor at the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and a founder of the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 3 and the Société Française de Philosophie 1. In 0 he was forced by the Nazis to leave Paris and sought refuge in the nonoccupied zone, where he died. A monistic idealist, Brunschvicg unfolded a philosophy of mind Introduction to the Life of the Mind, 0. His epistemology highlights judgment. Thinking is judging and judging is acting. He defined philosophy as “the mind’s methodical self-reflection.” Philosophy investigates man’s growing self-understanding. The mind’s recesses, or metaphysical truth, are accessible through analysis of the mind’s timely manifestations. His major works therefore describe the progress of science as progress of consciousness: The Stages of Mathematical Philosophy 2, Human Experience and Physical Causality 2, The Progress of Conscience in Western Philosophy 7, and Ages of Intelligence 4. An heir of Renouvier, Cournot, and Revaisson, Brunschvicg advocated a moral and spiritual conception of science and attempted to reconcile idealism and positivism.

buber: M.  G.: H. P. Grice is all about ‘I’ and ‘thou,’ as Buber is. Jewish philosopher, theologian, and political leader. Buber’s early influences include Hasidism and neo-Kantianism. Eventually he broke with the latter and became known as a leading religious existentialist. His chief philosophic works include his most famous book, Ich und du “I and Thou,” 3; Moses 6; Between Man and Man 7; and Eclipse of God 2. The crux of Buber’s thought is his conception of two primary relationships: I-Thou and I-It. IThou is characterized by openness, reciprocity, and a deep sense of personal involvement. The I confronts its Thou not as something to be studied, measured, or manipulated, but as a unique presence that responds to the I in its individuality. I-It is characterized by the tendency to treat something as an impersonal object governed by causal, social, or economic forces. Buber rejects the idea that people are isolated, autonomous agents operating according to abstract rules. Instead, reality arises between agents as they encounter and transform each other. In a word, reality is dialogical. Buber describes God as the ultimate Thou, the Thou who can never become an It. Thus God is reached not by inference but by a willingness to respond to the concrete reality of the divine presence. 

buchmanism: also called the Moral Rearmament Movement, a non-creedal international movement that sought to bring about universal brotherhood through a commitment to an objectivist moral system derived largely from the Gospels. It was founded by Frank Buchman 18781, an  Lutheran minister who resigned from his church in 8 in order to expand his ministry. To promote the movement, Buchman founded the Oxford Group at Oxford. H. P. Grice was a member.

bundle: theory: Is Grice proposing a ‘bundle theory’ of “Personal identity”: He defines “I” as an interlinked chain of mnemonic states, a view that accepts the idea that concrete objects consist of properties but denies the need for introducing substrata to account for their diversity. By contrast, one traditional view of concrete particular objects is that they are complexes consisting of two more fundamental kinds of entities: properties that can be exemplified by many different objects and a substratum that exemplifies those properties belonging to a particular object. Properties account for the qualitative identity of such objects while substrata account for their numerical diversity. The bundle theory is usually glossed as the view that a concrete object is nothing but a bundle of properties. This gloss, however, is inadequate. For if a “bundle” of properties is, e.g., a set of properties, then bundles of properties differ in significant ways from concrete objects. For sets of properties are necessary and eternal while concrete objects are contingent and perishing. A more adequate statement of the theory holds that a concrete object is a complex of properties which all stand in a fundamental contingent relation, call it co-instantiation, to one another. On this account, complexes of properties are neither necessary nor eternal. Critics of the theory, however, maintain that such complexes have all their properties essentially and cannot change properties, whereas concrete objects have some of their properties accidentally and undergo change. This objection fails to recognize that there are two distinct problems addressed by the bundle theory: a individuation and b identity through time. The first problem arises for all objects, both momentary and enduring. The second, however, arises only for enduring objects. The bundle theory typically offers two different solutions to these problems. An enduring concrete object is analyzed as a series of momentary objects which stand in some contingent relation R. Different versions of the theory offer differing accounts of the relation. For example, Hume holds that the self is a series of co-instantiated impressions and ideas, whose members are related to one another by causation and resemblance this is his bundle theory of the self. A momentary object, however, is analyzed as a complex of properties all of which stand in the relation of co-instantiation to one another. Consequently, even if one grants that a momentary complex of properties has all of its members essentially, it does not follow that an enduring object, which contains the complex as a temporal part, has those properties essentially unless one endorses the controversial thesis that an enduring object has its temporal parts essentially. Similarly, even if one grants that a momentary complex of properties cannot change in its properties, it does not follow that an enduring object, which consists of such complexes, cannot change its properties. Critics of the bundle theory argue that its analysis of momentary objects is also problematic. For it appears possible that two different momentary objects have all properties in common, yet there cannot be two different complexes with all properties in common. There are two responses available to a proponent of the theory. The first is to distinguish between a strong and a weak version of the theory. On the strong version, the thesis that a momentary object is a complex of co-instantiated properties is a necessary truth, while on the weak version it is a contingent truth. The possibility of two momentary objects with all properties in common impugns only the strong version of the theory. The second is to challenge the basis of the claim that it is possible for two momentary objects to have all their properties in common. Although critics allege that such a state of affairs is conceivable, proponents argue that investigation into the nature of conceivability does not underwrite this claim. 

buonafede: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Buonafede," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

buridan – and his ass – and the Griceian implicaturum -- j. philosopher. He was born in Béthune and educated at the  of Paris. Unlike most philosophers of his time, Buridan spent his academic career as a master in the faculty of arts, without seeking an advanced degree in theology. He was also unusual in being a secular cleric rather than a member of a religious order. Buridan wrote extensively on logic and natural philosophy, although only a few of his works have appeared in modern editions. The most important on logic are the Summulae de dialectica “Sum of Dialectic”, an introduction to logic conceived as a revision of, and extended commentary on, the Summulae logicales of Peter of Spain, a widely used logic textbook of the period; and the Tractatus de consequentiis, a treatise on modes of inference. Most of Buridan’s other writings are short literal commentaries expositiones and longer critical studies quaestiones of Aristotle’s works. Like most medieval nominalists, Buridan argued that universals have no real existence, except as concepts by which the mind “conceives of many things indifferently.” Likewise, he included only particular substances and qualities in his basic ontology. But his nominalist program is distinctive in its implementation. He differs, e.g., from Ockham in his accounts of motion, time, and quantity appealing, in the latter case, to quantitative forms to explain the impenetrability of bodies. In natural philosophy, Buridan is best known for introducing to the West the non-Aristotelian concept of impetus, or impressed force, to explain projectile motion. Although asses appear often in his examples, the particular example that has come via Spinoza and others to be known as “Buridan’s ass,” an ass starving to death between two equidistant and equally tempting piles of hay, is unknown in Buridan’s writings. It may, however, have originated as a caricature of Buridan’s theory of action, which attempts to find a middle ground between Aristotelian intellectualism and Franciscan voluntarism by arguing that the will’s freedom to act consists primarily in its ability to defer choice in the absence of a compelling reason to act one way or the other. Buridan’s intellectual legacy was considerable. His works continued to be read and discussed in universities for centuries after his death. Three of his students and disciples, Albert of Saxony, Marsilius of Inghen, and Nicole Oresme, went on to become distinguished philosophers in their own right. 

burke: e. discussed by H. P. Grice in his exploration on legal versus moral right, statesman and one of the eighteenth century’s greatest political writers. Born in Dublin, he moved to London to study law, then undertook a literary and political career. He sat in the House of Commons from 1765 to 1794. In speeches and pamphlets during these years he offered an ideological perspective on politics that endures to this day as the fountain of conservative wisdom. The philosophical stance that pervades Burke’s parliamentary career and writings is skepticism, a profound distrust of political rationalism, i.e., the achievement in the political realm of abstract and rational structures, ideals, and objectives. Burkean skeptics are profoundly anti-ideological, detesting what they consider the complex, mysterious, and existential givens of political life distorted, criticized, or planned from a perspective of abstract, generalized, and rational categories. The seminal expression of Burke’s skeptical conservatism is found in the Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790. The conservatism of the Reflections was earlier displayed, however, in Burke’s response to radical demands in England for democratic reform of Parliament in the early 1780s. The English radicals assumed that legislators could remake governments, when all wise men knew that “a prescriptive government never was made upon any foregone theory.” How ridiculous, then, to put governments on Procrustean beds and make them fit “the theories which learned and speculative men have made.” Such prideful presumption required much more rational capacity than could be found among ordinary mortals. One victim of Burke’s skepticism is the vaunted liberal idea of the social contract. Commonwealths were neither constructed nor ought they to be renovated according to a priori principles. The concept of an original act of contract is just such a principle. The only contract in politics is the agreement that binds generations past, present, and future, one that “is but a clause in the great primeval contract of an eternal society.” Burke rejects the voluntaristic quality of rationalist liberal contractualism. Individuals are not free to create their own political institutions. Political society and law are not “subject to the will of those who, by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law.” Men and groups “are not morally at liberty, at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement” to rip apart their communities and dissolve them into an “unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos.” Burke saw our stock of reason as small; despite this people still fled their basic limitations in flights of ideological fancy. They recognized no barrier to their powers and sought in politics to make reality match their speculative visions. Burke devoutly wished that people would appreciate their weakness, their “subordinate rank in the creation.” God has “subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned us.” And that place is to know the limits of one’s rational and speculative faculties. Instead of relying on their own meager supply of reason, politicians should avail themselves “of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.” Because people forget this they weave rational schemes of reform far beyond their power to implement. Buridan’s ass Burke, Edmund 108   108 Burke stands as the champion of political skepticism in revolt against Enlightenment rationalism and its “smugness of adulterated metaphysics,” which produced the “revolution of doctrine and theoretic dogma.” The sins of the  were produced by the “clumsy subtlety of their political metaphysics.” The “faith in the dogmatism of philosophers” led them to rely on reason and abstract ideas, on speculation and a priori principles of natural right, freedom, and equality as the basis for reforming governments. Englishmen, like Burke, had no such illusions; they understood the complexity and fragility of human nature and human institutions, they were not “the converts of Rousseau . . . the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius [had] made no progress amongst [them].” 

burleigh: W. H. P. Grice preferred the spelling “Burleigh,” or “Burleighensis” if you must – “That’s how we called him at Oxford!” English philosopher who taught philosophy at Oxford and theology at Paris. An orthodox Aristotelian and a realist, he attacked Ockham’s logic and his interpretation of the Aristotelian categories. Burley commented on almost of all of Aristotle’s works in logic, natural philosophy, and moral philosophy. An early Oxford Calculator, Burley began his work as a fellow of Merton  in 1301. By 1310, he was at Paris. A student of Thomas Wilton, he probably incepted before 1322; by 1324 he was a fellow of the Sorbonne. His commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences has been lost. After leaving Paris, Burley was associated with the household of Richard of Bury and the court of Edward III, who sent him as an envoy to the papal curia in 1327. De vita et moribus philosophorum “On the Life and Manners of Philosophers”, an influential, popular account of the lives of the philosophers, has often been attributed to Burley, but modern scholarship suggests that the attribution is incorrect. Many of Burley’s independent works dealt with problems in natural philosophy, notably De intensione et remissione formarum “On the Intension and Remission of Forms”, De potentiis animae “On the Faculties of the Soul”, and De substantia orbis. De primo et ultimo instanti “On First and Last Instants” discusses which temporal processes have intrinsic, which extrinsic limits. In his Tractatus de formis Burley attacks Ockham’s theory of quantity. Similarly, Burley’s theory of motion opposed Ockham’s views. Ockham restricts the account of motion to the thing moving, and the quality, quantity, and place acquired by motion. By contrast, Burley emphasizes the process of motion and the quantitative measurement of that process. Burley attacks the view that the forms successively acquired in motion are included in the form finally acquired. He ridicules the view that contrary qualities hot and cold could simultaneously inhere in the same subject producing intermediate qualities warmth. Burley emphasized the formal character of logic in his De puritate artis logicae “On the Purity of the Art of Logic”, one of the great medieval treatises on logic. Ockham attacked a preliminary version of De puritate in his Summa logicae; Burley called Ockham a beginner in logic. In De puritate artis logicae, Burley makes syllogistics a subdivision of consequences. His treatment of negation is particularly interesting for his views on double negation and the restrictions on the rule that notnot-p implies p. Burley distinguished between analogous words and analogous concepts and natures. His theory of analogy deserves detailed discussion. These views, like the views expressed in most of Burley’s works, have seldom been carefully studied by modern philosophers. 

butlerianism: J., cited by H. P. Grice, principle of conversational benevolence. English theologian and Anglican bishop who made important contributions to moral philosophy, to the understanding of moral agency, and to the development of deontological ethics. Better known in his own time for The Analogy of Religion 1736, a defense, along broadly empiricist lines, of orthodox, “revealed” Christian doctrine against deist criticism, Butler’s main philosophical legacy was a series of highly influential arguments and theses contained in a collection of Sermons 1725 and in two “Dissertations” appended to The Analogy  one on virtue and the other on personal identity. The analytical method of these essays “everything is what it is and not another thing” provided a model for much of English-speaking moral philosophy to follow. For example, Butler is often credited with refuting psychological hedonism, the view that all motives can be reduced to the desire for pleasure or happiness. The sources of human motivation are complex and structurally various, he argued. Appetites and passions seek their own peculiar objects, and pleasure must itself be understood as involving an intrinsic positive regard for a particular object. Other philosophers had maintained, like Butler, that we can desire, e.g., the happiness of others intrinsically, and not just as a means to our own happiness. And others had argued that the person who aims singlemindedly at his own happiness is unlikely to attain it. Butler’s distinctive contribution was to demonstrate that happiness and pleasure themselves require completion by specific objects for which we have an intrinsic positive regard. Self-love, the desire for our own happiness, is a reflective desire for, roughly, the satisfaction of our other desires. But self-love is not our only reflective desire; we also have “a settled reasonable principle of benevolence.” We can consider the goods of others and come on reflection to desire their welfare more or less independently of particular emotional involvement such as compassion. In morals, Butler equally opposed attempts to reduce virtue to benevolence, even of the most universal and impartial sort. Benevolence seeks the good or happiness of others, whereas the regulative principle of virtue is conscience, the faculty of moral approval or disapproval of conduct and character. Moral agency requires, he argued, the capacities to reflect disinterestedly on action, motive, and character, to judge these in distinctively moral terms and not just in terms of their relation to the non-moral good of happiness, and to guide conduct by such judgments. Butler’s views about the centrality of conscience in the moral life were important in the development of deontological ethics as well as in the working out of an associated account of moral agency. Along the first lines, he argued in the “Dissertation” that what it is right for a person to do depends, not just on the non-morally good or bad consequences of an action, but on such other morally relevant features as the relationships the agent bears to affected others e.g., friend or beneficiary, or whether fraud, injustice, treachery, or violence is involved. Butler thus distinguished analytically between distinctively moral evaluation of action and assessing an act’s relation to such non-moral values as happiness. And he provided succeeding deontological theorists with a litany of examples where the right thing to do is apparently not what would have the best consequences. Butler believed God instills a “principle of reflection” or conscience in us through which we intrinsically disapprove of such actions as fraud and injustice. But he also believed that God, being omniscient and benevolent, fitted us with these moral attitudes because “He foresaw this constitution of our nature would produce more happiness, than forming us with a temper of mere general benevolence.” This points, however, toward a kind of anti-deontological or consequentialist view, sometimes called indirect consequentialism, which readily acknowledges that what it is right to do does not depend on which act will have the best consequences. It is entirely appropriate, according to indirect consequentialism, that conscience approve or disapprove of acts on grounds other than a calculation of consequences precisely because its doing so has the best consequences. Here we have a version of the sort of view later to be found, for example, in Mill’s defense of utilitarianism against the objection that it conflicts with justice and rights. Morality is a system of social control that demands allegiance to considerations other than utility, e.g., justice and honesty. But it is justifiable only to the extent that the system itself has utility. This sets up something of a tension. From the conscientious perspective an agent must distinguish between the question of which action would have the best consequences and the question of what he should do. And from that perspective, Butler thinks, one will necessarily regard one’s answer to the second question as authoritative for conduct. Conscience necessarily implicitly asserts its own authority, Butler famously claimed. Thus, insofar as agents come to regard their conscience as simply a method of social control with good consequences, they will come to be alienated from the inherent authority their conscience implicitly claims. A similar issue arises concerning the relation between conscience and self-love. Butler says that both self-love and conscience are “superior principles in the nature of man” in that an action will be unsuitable to a person’s nature if it is contrary to either. This makes conscience’s authority conditional on its not conflicting with self-love and vice versa. Some scholars, moreover, read other passages as implying that no agent could reasonably follow conscience unless doing so was in the agent’s interest. But again, it would seem that an agent who internalized such a view would be alienated from the authority that, if Butler is right, conscience implicitly claims. For Butler, conscience or the principle of reflection is uniquely the faculty of practical judgment. Unlike either self-love or benevolence, even when these are added to the powers of inference and empirical cognition, only conscience makes moral agency possible. Only a creature with conscience can accord with or violate his own judgment of what he ought to do, and thereby be a “law to himself.” This suggests a view that, like Kant’s, seeks to link deontology to a conception of autonomous moral agency.

byzantine. This is important since it displays Grice’s disrespect for stupid traditions. There is Austin trying to lecture what he derogatorily called ‘philosophical hack’ (“I expect he was being ironic”) into learning through the Little Oxford Dictionary. HARDLY Grice’s cup of tea. Austiin, or the ‘master,’ as Grice ironically calls him, could patronize less patrician play group members, but not him! In any case, Austin grew so tiresome, that Grice grabbed the Little Dictionary. Austin had gave him license to go and refute Ryle on ‘feeling’. “So, go and check with the dictionary, to see howmany things you can feel.” Grice started with the A and got as far as the last relevant item under the ‘B,” he hoped. “And then I realised it was all hopeless. A waste. Language botany, indeed!” At a later stage, he grew more affectionate, especially when seeing that this was part of his armoury (as Gellner had noted): a temperament, surely not shared by Strawson, for subtleties and nuances. How Byzantine can Grice feel? Vide ‘agitation.’ Does feeling Byzantine entail a feeling of BEING Byzantine? originally used of the style of art and architecture developed there 4c.-5c. C.E.; later in reference to the complex, devious, and intriguing character of the royal court of Constantinople (1937). Bȳzantĭum , ii, n., = Βυζάντιον,I.a city in Thrace, on the Bosphorus, opposite the Asiatic Chalcedon, later Constantinopolis, now Constantinople; among the Turks, Istamboul or Stamboul (i.e. εις τὴν πόλιν), Mel. 2, 2, 6; Plin. 4, 11, 18, § 46; 9, 15, 20, § 50 sq.; Nep. Paus. 2, 2; Liv. 38, 16, 3 sq.; Tac. A. 12, 63 sq.; id. H. 2. 83; 3, 47 al.—II. Derivv.A. Bȳzantĭus , a, um, adj., of Byzantium, Byzantine: “litora,” the Strait of Constantinople, Ov. Tr. 1, 10, 31: “portus,” Plin. 9, 15, 20, § 51.—Subst.: Bȳ-zantĭi , ōrum, m., the inhabitants of Byzantium, Cic. Prov. Cons. 3, 5; 4, 6 sq.; Cic. Verr. 2, 2, 31, § 76; Nep. Timoth. 1, 2; Liv. 32, 33, 7.—B. Bȳzantĭăcus , a, um, adj., of Byzantium: “lacerti,” Stat. S. 4, 9, 13. — C. Bȳzantīnus , a, um, adj., the same (post-class.): “Lygos,” Aus. Clar. Urb. 2: “frigora,” Sid. Ep. 7, 17. Byzantine feeling -- Einfühlung G., ‘feeling into’, empathy. In contrast to sympathy, where one’s identity is preserved in feeling with or for the other, in empathy or Einfühlung one tends to lose oneself in the other. The concept of Einfühlung received its classical formulation in the work of Theodor Lipps, who characterized it as a process of involuntary, inner imitation whereby a subject identifies through feeling with the movement of another body, whether it be the real leap of a dancer or the illusory upward lift of an architectural column. Complete empathy is considered to be aesthetic, providing a non-representational access to beauty. Husserl used a phenomenologically purified concept of Einfühlung to account for the way the self directly recognizes the other. Husserl’s student Edith Stein described Einfühlung as a blind egoism Einfühlung 255   255 mode of knowledge that reaches the experience of the other without possessing it. Einfühlung is not to be equated with Verstehen or human understanding, which, as Dilthey pointed out, requires the use of all one’s mental powers, and cannot be reduced to a mere mode of feeling. To understand is not to apprehend something empathetically as the projected locus of an actual experience, but to apperceive the meaning of expressions of experience in relation to their context. Whereas understanding is reflective, empathy is prereflective. 

cabala – or kabala – cited by Grice “Perhaps Moses brought more than the ten commandments from Sinai.” from Hebrew qabbala, ‘tradition’, a system of Jewish mysticism and theosophy practiced from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century; loosely, all forms of Jewish mysticism. Believed by its adherents to be a tradition communicated to Moses at Sinai, the main body of cabalistic writing, the Zohar, is thought to be the work primarily of Moses de León of Guadalajara, in the thirteenth century, though he attributed it to the second-century rabbi Simon bar Yohai. The Zohar builds on earlier Jewish mysticism, and is replete with gnostic and Neoplatonic themes. It offers the initiated access to the mysteries of God’s being, human destiny, and the meaning of the commandments. The transcendent and strictly unitary God of rabbinic Judaism here encounters ten apparently real divine powers, called sefirot, which together represent God’s being and appearance in the cosmos and include male and female principles. Evil in the world is seen as a reflection of a cosmic rupture in this system, and redemption on earth entails restoration of the divine order. Mankind can assist in this task through knowledge, piety, and observance of the law. Isaac Luria in the sixteenth century developed these themes with graphic descriptions of the dramas of creation, cosmic rupture, and restoration, the latter process requiring human assistance more than ever.

cæteris  paribus: Strawson and Wiggins: that the principle holds ceteris paribus is a necessary condition for the very existence of the activity in question. Central. Grice technically directs his attenetion to this in his “Method”. There, he tries to introduce “WILLING” as a predicate, i.e. a theoretical concept which is implicitly defined by the LAW in a THEORY that it occurs. This theory is ‘psychology,’ but understood as a ‘folk science.’ So the conditionals are ‘ceteris paribus.’ Schiffer and Cartwright were aware of this. Especially Cartwright who attended seminars on this with Grice on ‘as if.’ Schiffer was well aware of the topic via Loar and others. Griceians who were trying to come up with a theory of content without relying on semantic stuff would involve ‘caeteris paribus’ ‘laws.’ Grice in discussion with Davidson comes to the same conclusion, hence his “A T C,’ all things considered and prima facie. H. L. A. Hart, with his concept of ‘defeasibility’ relates. Vide Baker. And obviously those who regard ‘implicaturum’ as nonmonotonic. Caeteris paribus -- Levinon “generalised implicaturum as by default” default logic, a formal system for reasoning with defaults, developed by Raymond Reiter in 0. Reiter’s defaults have the form ‘P:MQ1 , . . . , MQn/R’, read ‘If P is believed and Q1 . . . Qn are consistent with one’s beliefs, then R may be believed’. Whether a proposition is consistent with one’s beliefs depends on what defaults have already been applied. Given the defaults P:MQ/Q and R:M-Q/-Q, and the facts P and R, applying the first default yields Q while applying the second default yields -Q. So applying either default blocks the other. Consequently, a default theory may have several default extensions. Normal defaults having the form P:MQ/Q, useful for representing simple cases of nonmonotonic reasoning, are inadequate for more complex cases. Reiter produces a reasonably clean proof theory for normal default theories and proves that every normal default theory has an extension. 

Cabeo: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Cabeo," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

Cacciari: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Cacciari," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

cairdianism:  e. Oxford Hegelian of the type Grice saw mostly every day! philosopher, a leading absolute idealist. Influential as both a writer and a teacher, Caird was professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow and master of Balliol , Oxford. His aim in philosophy was to overcome intellectual oppositions. In his main work, The Critical Philosophy of Kant 9, he argued that Kant had done this by using reason to synthesize rationalism and empiricism while reconciling science and religion. In Caird’s view, Kant unfortunately treated reason as subjective, thereby retaining an opposition between self and world. Loosely following Hegel, Caird claimed that objective reason, or the Absolute, was a larger whole in which both self and world were fragments. In his Evolution of Religion 3 Caird argued that religion progressively understands God as the Absolute and hence as what reconciles self and world. This allowed him to defend Christianity as the highest evolutionary stage of religion without defending the literal truth of Scripture. 

cajetan, original name, -- H. P. Grice thinks that Shropshire borrowed his proof for the immortality of the soul from Cajetan -- Tommaso de Vio, prelate and theologian. Born in Gaeta from which he took his name, he entered the Dominican order in 1484 and studied philosophy and theology at Naples, Bologna, and Padua. He became a cardinal in 1517; during the following two years he traveled to G.y, where he engaged in a theological controversy with Luther. His major work is a Commentary on St. Thomas’ Summa of Theology 1508, which promoted a renewal of interest in Scholastic and Thomistic philosophy during the sixteenth century. In agreement with Aquinas, Cajetan places the origin of human knowledge in sense perception. In contrast with Aquinas, he denies that the immortality of the soul and the existence of God as our creator can be proved. Cajetan’s work in logic was based on traditional Aristotelian syllogistic logic but is original in its discussion of the notion of analogy. Cajetan distinguishes three types: analogy of inequality, analogy of attribution, and analogy of proportion. Whereas he rejected the first two types as improper, he regarded the last as the basic type of analogy and appealed to it in explaining how humans come to know God and how analogical reasoning applied to God and God’s creatures avoids being equivocal. 

calculus: -- Hobbes uses ‘calculation – How latin is that? calcŭlo , āre, v. a. id.,  I.to calculate, compute, reckon (late Lat.). from diminutive of ‘calx,’ a stone usef for reckon --- I. Lit., Prud. στεφ. 3, 131.— II. Trop., to consider as, to esteem, Sid. Ep. 7, 9.Grice uses ‘calculus’ slightly different, in the phrase “first-order predicate calculus with time-relative identity” -- a central branch of mathematics, originally conceived in connection with the determination of the tangent or normal to a curve and of the area between it and some fixed axis; but it also embraced the calculation of volumes and of areas of curved surfaces, the lengths of curved lines, and so on. Mathematical analysis is a still broader branch that subsumed the calculus under its rubric see below, together with the theories of functions and of infinite series. Still more general and/or abstract versions of analysis have been developed during the twentieth century, with applications to other branches of mathematics, such as probability theory. The origins of the calculus go back to Grecian mathematics, usually in problems of determining the slope of a tangent to a curve and the area enclosed underneath it by some fixed axes or by a closed curve; sometimes related questions such as the length of an arc of a curve, or the area of a curved surface, were considered. The subject flourished in the seventeenth century when the analytical geometry of Descartes gave algebraic means to extend the procedures. It developed further when the problems of slope and area were seen to require the finding of new functions, and that the pertaining processes were seen to be inverse. Newton and Leibniz had these insights in the late seventeenth century, independently and in different forms. In the Leibnizian differential calculus the differential dx was proposed as an infinitesimal increment on x, and of the same dimension as x; the slope of the tangent to a curve with y as a function of x was the ratio dy/dx. The integral, ex, was infinitely large and of the dimension of x; thus for linear variables x and y the area ey dx was the sum of the areas of rectangles y high and dx wide. All these quantities were variable, and so could admit higher-order differentials and integrals ddx, eex, and so on. This theory was extended during the eighteenth century, especially by Euler, to functions of several independent variables, and with the creation of the calculus of variations. The chief motivation was to solve differential equations: they were motivated largely by problems in mechanics, which was then the single largest branch of mathematics. Newton’s less successful fluxional calculus used limits in its basic definitions, thereby changing dimensions for the defined terms. The fluxion was the rate of change of a variable quantity relative to “time”; conversely, that variable was the “fluent” of its fluxion. These quantities were also variable; fluxions and fluents of higher orders could be defined from them. A third tradition was developed during the late eighteenth century by J. L. Lagrange. For him the “derived functions” of a function fx were definable by purely algebraic means from its Taylorian power-series expansion about any value of x. By these means it was hoped to avoid the use of both infinitesimals and limits, which exhibited conceptual difficulties, the former due to their unclear ontology as values greater than zero but smaller than any orthodox quantity, the latter because of the naive theories of their deployment. In the early nineteenth century the Newtonian tradition died away, and Lagrange’s did not gain general conviction; however, the LeibnizEuler line kept some of its health, for its utility in physical applications. But all these theories gradually became eclipsed by the mathematical analysis of A. L. Cauchy. As with Newton’s calculus, the theory of limits was central, but they were handled in a much more sophisticated way. He replaced the usual practice of defining the integral as more or less automatically the inverse of the differential or fluxion or whatever by giving independent definitions of the derivative and the integral; thus for the first time the fundamental “theorem” of the calculus, stating their inverse relationship, became a genuine theorem, requiring sufficient conditions upon the function to ensure its truth. Indeed, Cauchy pioneered the routine specification of necessary and/or sufficient conditions for truth of theorems in analysis. His discipline also incorporated the theory of discontinuous functions and the convergence or divergence of infinite series. Again, general definitions were proffered and conditions sought for properties to hold. Cauchy’s discipline was refined and extended in the second half of the nineteenth century by K. Weierstrass and his followers at Berlin. The study of existence theorems as for irrational numbers, and also technical questions largely concerned with trigonometric series, led to the emergence of set topology. In addition, special attention was given to processes involving several variables changing in value together, and as a result the importance of quantifiers was recognized  for example, reversing their order from ‘there is a y such that for all x . . .’ to ‘for all x, there is a y . . .’. This developed later into general set theory, and then to mathematical logic: Cantor was the major figure in the first aspect, while G. Peano pioneered much for the second. Under this regime of “rigor,” infinitesimals such as dx became unacceptable as mathematical objects. However, they always kept an unofficial place because of their utility when applying the calculus, and since World War II theories have been put forward in which the established level of rigor and generality are preserved and even improved but in which infinitesimals are reinstated. The best-known of these theories, the non-standard analysis of A. Robinson, makes use of model theory by defining infinitesimals as arithmetical inverses of the transfinite integers generated by a “non-standard model” of Peano’s postulates for the natural numbers.

calvin: j.: As C. of E., Grice was aware of the problems his father, a non-conformist, brought to his High Anglican household, theologian and church reformer, a major figure in the Protestant Reformation. He was especially important for the so-called Reformed churches in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, G.y, Scotland, and England. Calvin was a theologian in the humanist tradition rather than a philosopher. He valued philosophy as “a noble gift of God” and cited philosophers especially Plato when it suited his purposes; but he rejected philosophical speculation about “higher things” and despised  though sometimes exploiting its resources  the dominant Scholastic philosophy of his time, to which he had been introduced at the  of Paris. His eclectic culture also included a variety of philosophical ideas, of whose source he was often unaware, that inevitably helped to shape his thought. His Christianae religionis institutio first ed. 1536 but repeatedly enlarged; in English generally cited as Institutes, his theological treatises, his massive biblical commentaries, and his letters, all of which were tr. into most European languages, thus helped to transmit various philosophical motifs and attitudes in an unsystematic form both to contemporaries and to posterity. He passed on to his followers impulses derived from both the antiqui and the moderni. From the former he inherited an intellectualist anthropology that conceived of the personality as a hierarchy of faculties properly subordinated to reason, which was at odds with his evangelical theology; and, though he professed to scorn Stoicism, a moralism often more Stoic than evangelical. He also relied occasionally on the Scholastic quaestio, and regularly treated substantives, like the antiqui, as real entities. These elements in his thought also found expression in tendencies to a natural theology based on an innate and universal religious instinct that can discern evidences of the existence and attributes of God everywhere in nature, and a conception of the Diety as immutable and intelligible. This side of Calvinism eventually found expression in Unitarianism and universalism. It was, however, in uneasy tension with other tendencies in his thought that reflect both his biblicism and a nominalist and Scotist sense of the extreme transcendence of God. Like other humanists, therefore, he was also profoundly skeptical about the capacity of the human mind to grasp ultimate truth, an attitude that rested, for him, on both the consequences of original sin and the merely conventional origins of language. Corollaries of this were his sense of the contingency of all human intellectual constructions and a tendency to emphasize the utility rather than the truth even of such major elements in his theology as the doctrine of predestination. It may well be no accident, therefore, that later skepticism and pragmatism have been conspicuous in thinkers nurtured by later Calvinism, such as Bayle, Hume, and James. 

cambridge change, a non-genuine change: Grice loved the phrase seeing that, “while at Oxford we had a minor revolution, at Cambridge, if the place counts, they didn’t. “I went to Oxford. You went to Cambridge. He went to the London School of Economics.” If I turn pale, I am changing, whereas your turning pale is only a Cambridge change in me. When I acquire the property of being such that you are pale, I do not change. In general, an object’s acquiring a new property is not a sufficient condition for that object to change although some other object may genuinely change. Thus also, my being such that you are pale counts only as a Cambridge property of me, a property such that my gaining or losing it is only a Cambridge change. Cambridge properties are a proper subclass of extrinsic properties: being south of Chicago is considered an extrinsic property of me, but since my moving to Canada would be a genuine change, being south of Chicago cannot, for me, be a Cambridge property. The concept of a Cambridge change reflects a way of thinking entrenched in common sense, but it is difficult to clarify, and its philosophical value is controversial. Neither science nor formal semantics, e.g., supports this viewpoint. Perhaps calculus, fluxional Cambridge changes and properties are, for better or worse, inseparable from a vague, intuitive metaphysics. 

campanella: one of the most important of the Italian philosophers.  H. P. Grice enjoyed his philosophical poems.-  15681639,  theologian, philosopher, and poet. He joined the Dominican order in 1582. Most of the years between 1592 and 1634 he spent in prison for heresy and for conspiring to replace  rule in southern Italy with a utopian republic. He fled to France in 1634 and spent his last years in freedom. Some of his best poetry was written while he was chained in a dungeon; and during less rigorous confinement he managed to write over a hundred books, not all of which survive. His best-known work, The City of the Sun 1602; published 1623, describes a community governed in accordance with astrological principles, with a priest as head of state. In later political writings, Campanella attacked Machiavelli and called for either a universal  monarchy with the pope as spiritual head or a universal theocracy with the pope as both spiritual and temporal leader. His first publication was Philosophy Demonstrated by the Senses 1591, which supported the theories of Telesio and initiated his lifelong attack on Aristotelianism. He hoped to found a new Christian philosophy based on the two books of nature and Scripture, both of which are manifestations of God. While he appealed to sense experience, he was not a straightforward empiricist, for he saw the natural world as alive and sentient, and he thought of magic as a tool for utilizing natural processes. In this he was strongly influenced by Ficino. Despite his own difficulties with Rome, he wrote in support of Galileo. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Campanella," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

campbell: n. r. – H. P. Grice drew some ideas on scientific laws from Campbell --  British physicist and philosopher of science. A successful experimental physicist, Campbell with A. Wood discovered the radioactivity of potassium. His analysis of science depended on a sharp distinction between experimental laws and theories. Experimental laws are generalizations established by observations. A theory has the following structure. First, it requires a largely arbitrary hypothesis, which in itself is untestable. To render it testable, the theory requires a “dictionary” of propositions linking the hypothesis to scientific laws, which can be established experimentally. But theories are not merely logical relations between hypotheses and experimental laws; they also require concrete analogies or models. Indeed, the models suggest the nature of the propositions in the dictionary. The analogies are essential components of the theory, and, for Campbell, are nearly always mechanical. His theory of science greatly influenced Nagel’s The Structure of Science 1. 

camus, A.: H. P. Grice said that Martin Heidegger is the greatest philosopher alive – He was aware that he was contesting with Camus – but Grice saw Camus moer as a ‘novelist’ than a philosopher. --  philosophical novelist and essayist who was also a prose poet and the conscience of his times. He was born and raised in Algeria, and his experiences as a fatherless, tubercular youth, as a young playwright and journalist in Algiers, and later in the anti-G. resistance in Paris during World War II informed everything he wrote. His best-known writings are not overtly political; his most famous works, the novel The Stranger written in 0, published in 2 and his book-length essay The Myth of Sisyphus written in 1, published in 3 explore the notion of “the absurd,” which Camus alternatively describes as the human condition and as “a widespread sensitivity of our times.” The absurd, briefly defined, is the confrontation between ourselves  with our demands for rationality and justice  and an “indifferent universe.” Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to the endless, futile task of rolling a rock up a mountain whence it would roll back down of its own weight, thus becomes an exemplar of the human condition, struggling hopelessly and pointlessly to achieve something. The odd antihero of The Stranger, on the other hand, unconsciously accepts the absurdity of life. He makes no judgments, accepts the most repulsive characters as his friends and neighbors, and remains unmoved by the death of his mother and his own killing of a man. Facing execution for his crime, he “opens his heart to the benign indifference of the universe.” But such stoic acceptance is not the message of Camus’s philosophy. Sisyphus thrives he is even “happy” by virtue of his scorn and defiance of the gods, and by virtue of a “rebellion” that refuses to give in to despair. This same theme motivates Camus’s later novel, The Plague7, and his long essay The Rebel 1. In his last work, however, a novel called The Fall published in 6, the year before he won the Nobel prize for literature, Camus presents an unforgettably perverse character named Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who exemplifies all the bitterness and despair rejected by his previous characters and in his earlier essays. Clamence, like the character in The Stranger, refuses to judge people, but whereas Meursault the “stranger” is incapable of judgment, Clamence who was once a lawyer makes it a matter of philosophical principle, “for who among us is innocent?” It is unclear where Camus’s thinking was heading when he was killed in an automobile accident with his publisher, Gallimard, who survived. 

canguilhem: g. H. P. Grice drew some ideas on scientific laws from Canguillhem -- historian and philosopher of science. Canguilhem succeeded Gaston Bachelard as director of the Institut d’Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques at the  of Paris. He developed and sometimes revised Bachelard’s view of science, extending it to issues in the biological and medical sciences, where he focused particularly on the concepts of the normal and the pathological The Normal and the Pathological, 6. On his account norms are not objective in the sense of being derived from value-neutral scientific inquiry, but are rooted in the biological reality of the organisms that they regulate. Canguilhem also introduced an important methodological distinction between concepts and theories. Rejecting the common view that scientific concepts are simply functions of the theories in which they are embedded, he argued that the use of concepts to interpret data is quite distinct from the use of theories to explain the data. Consequently, the same concepts may occur in very different theoretical contexts. Canguilhem made particularly effective use of this distinction in tracing the origin of the concept of reflex action. 

captainship. Strawson calls Grice his captain. In the inaugural lecture. . A struggle on what seems to be such a From Meaning and Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970) TRUTH AND MEANING central issue in philosophy should have something of a Homeric quality; and a Homeric struggle calls for gods and heroes. I can at least, though tentatively, name some living captains and benevolent shades: on the one side, say, Grice, Austin, and the later Wittgenstein; on the other, Chomsky, Frege, and the earlier Wittgenstein.

cardinal -- H. P. Grice and The cardinal virtues, prudence prudential (in ratione) practical wisdom, courage (fortitude in irascibili), temperance (temperantia in concuspicibili), and justice (iustitia in voluntate). Grice thought them oxymoronic: “Virtue is entire, surely!” -- Medievals deemed them cardinal from Latin cardo, ‘hinge’ because of their important or pivotal role in human flourishing. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates explains them through a doctrine of the three parts of the soul, suggesting that a person is prudent when knowledge of how to live wisdom informs her reason, courageous when informed reason governs her capacity for wrath, temperate when it also governs her appetites, and just when each part performs its proper task with informed reason in control. Development of thought on the cardinal virtues was closely tied to the doctrine of the unity of the virtues, i.e., that a person possessing one virtue will have them all. 

carlyleianim:, T.: When Grice was feeling that his mode operators made for poor prose he would wonder, “what Carlyle might think of this!” -- Scottish-born essayist, historian, and social critic, one of the most popular writers and lecturers in nineteenth-century Britain. His works include literary criticism, history, and cultural criticism. With respect to philosophy, his views on the theory of history are his most significant contributions. According to Carlyle, great personages are the most important causal factor in history. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History 1841 asserts, “Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.” Carlyle’s doctrine has been challenged from many different directions. Hegelian and Marxist philosophers maintain that the so-called great men of history are not really the engine of history, but merely reflections of deeper forces, such as economic ones, while contemporary historians emphasize the priority of “history from below”  the social history of everyday people  as far more representative of the historical process.

carnapianism: r: the inventor, with Russell, of the pirot. -- G.-born  philosopher, one of the leaders of the Vienna Circle, a movement loosely called logical positivism or logical empiricism. He made fundamental contributions to semantics and the philosophy of science, as well as to the foundations of probability and inductive logic. He was a staunch advocate of, and active in, the unity of science movement. Carnap received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the  of Jena in 1. His first major work was Die Logische Aufbau der Welt 8, in which he sought to apply the new logic recently developed by Frege and by Russell and Whitehead to problems in the philosophy of science. Although influential, it was not tr. until 7, when it appeared as The Logical Structure of the World. It was important as one of the first clear and unambiguous statements that the important work of philosophy concerned logical structure: that language and its logic were to be the focus of attention. In 5 Carnap left his native G.y for the United States, where he taught at the  of Chicago and then at UCLA. Die Logiche Syntax der Sprach 4 was rapidly tr. into English, appearing as The Logical Syntax of Language 7. This was followed in 1 by Introduction to Semantics, and in 2 by The Formalization of Logic. In 7 Meaning and Necessity appeared; it provided the groundwork for a modal logic that would mirror the meticulous semantic development of first-order logic in the first two volumes. One of the most important concepts introduced in these volumes was that of a state description. A state description is the linguistic counterpart of a possible world: in a given language, the most complete description of the world that can be given. Carnap then turned to one of the most pervasive and important problems to arise in both the philosophy of science and the theory of meaning. To say that the meaning of a sentence is given by the conditions under which it would be verified as the early positivists did or that a scientific theory is verified by predictions that turn out to be true, is clearly to speak loosely. Absolute verification does not occur. To carry out the program of scientific philosophy in a realistic way, we must be able to speak of the support given by inconclusive evidence, either in providing epistemological justification for scientific knowledge, or in characterizing the meanings of many of the terms of our scientific language. This calls for an understanding of probability, or as Carnap preferred to call it, degree of confirmation. We must distinguish between two senses of probability: what he called probability1, corresponding to credibility, and probability2, corresponding to the frequency or empirical conception of probability defended by Reichenbach and von Mises. ‘Degree of confirmation’ was to be the formal concept corresponding to credibility. The first book on this subject, written from the same point of view as the works on semantics, was The Logical Foundations of Probability 0. The goal was a logical definition of ‘ch,e’: the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis h, relative to a body of evidence e, or the degree of rational belief that one whose total evidence was e should commit to h. Of course we must first settle on a formal language in which to express the hypothesis and the evidence; for this Carnap chooses a first-order language based on a finite number of one-place predicates, and a countable number of individual constants. Against this background, we perform the following reductions: ‘ch,e’ represents a conditional probability; thus it can be represented as the ratio of the absolute probabilCarlyle, Thomas Carnap, Rudolf 118   118 ity of h & e to the absolute probability of e. Absolute probabilities are represented by the value of a measure function m, defined for sentences of the language. The problem is to define m. But every sentence in Carnap’s languages is equivalent to a disjunction of state descriptions; the measure to be assigned to it must, according to the probability calculus, be the sum of the measures assigned to its constituent state descriptions. Now the problem is to define m for state descriptions. Recall that state descriptions were part of the machinery Carnap developed earlier. The function c† is a confirmation function based on the assignment of equal measures to each state description. It is inadequate, because if h is not entailed by e, c†h,e % m†h, the a priori measure assigned to h. We cannot “learn from experience.” A measure that does not have that drawback is m*, which is based on the assignment of equal measures to each structure description. A structure description is a set of state descriptions; two state descriptions belong to the same structure description just in case one can be obtained from the other by a permutation of individual constants. Within the structure description, equal values are assigned to each state description. In the next book, The Continuum of Inductive Methods, Carnap takes the rate at which we learn from experience to be a fundamental parameter of his assignments of probability. Like measures on state descriptions, the values of the probability of the singular predictive inference determine all other probabilities. The “singular predictive inference” is the inference from the observation that individual 1 has one set of properties, individual 2 has another set of properties, etc., to the conclusion: individual j will have property k. Finally, in the last works Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, vols. I [1] and II [0], edited with Richard Jeffrey Carnap offered two long articles constituting his Basic System of Inductive Logic. This system is built around a language having families of attributes e.g., color or sound that can be captured by predicates. The basic structure is still monadic, and the logic still lacks identity, but there are more parameters. There is a parameter l that reflects the “rate of learning from experience”; a parameter h that reflects an inductive relation between values of attributes belonging to families. With the introduction of arbitrary parameters, Carnap was edging toward a subjective or personalistic view of probability. How far he was willing to go down the subjectivist garden path is open to question; that he discovered more to be relevant to inductive logic than the “language” of science seems clear. Carnap’s work on probability measures on formal languages is destined to live for a long time. So too is his work on formal semantics. He was a staunch advocate of the fruitfulness of formal studies in philosophy, of being clear and explicit, and of offering concrete examples. Beyond the particular philosophical doctrines he advocated, these commitments characterize his contribution to philosophy.

Cartesio: cartesianism: The word ‘Cartesianism’ shows that the ‘de’ that the English adored (“How to become a Brit” – Mykes) is mostly otiose! -- Descartes, R.: v. H. P. Grice, “Descartes on clear and distinct perception,” -- philosopher, a founder of the “modern age” and perhaps the most important figure in the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century in which the traditional systems of understanding based on Aristotle were challenged and, ultimately, overthrown. His conception of philosophy was all-embracing: it encompassed mathematics and the physical sciences as well as psychology and ethics, and it was based on what he claimed to be absolutely firm and reliable metaphysical foundations. His approach to the problems of knowledge, certainty, and the nature of the human mind played a major part in shaping the subsequent development of philosophy. Life and works. Descartes was born in a small town near Tours that now bears his name. He was brought up by his maternal grandmother his mother having died soon after his birth, and at the age of ten he was sent to the recently founded Jesuit  of La Flèche in Anjou, where he remained as a boarding pupil for nine years. At La Flèche he studied classical literature and traditional classics-based subjects such as history and rhetoric as well as natural philosophy based on the Aristotelian system and theology. He later wrote of La Flèche that he considered it “one of the best schools in Europe,” but that, as regards the philosophy he had learned there, he saw that “despite being cultivated for many centuries by the best minds, it contained no point which was not disputed and hence doubtful.” At age twenty-two having taken a law degree de re Descartes, René 223   223 at Poitiers, Descartes set out on a series of travels in Europe, “resolving,” as he later put it, “to seek no knowledge other than that which could be found either in myself or the great book of the world.” The most important influence of this early period was Descartes’s friendship with the Dutchman Isaac Beeckman, who awakened his lifelong interest in mathematics  a science in which he discerned precision and certainty of the kind that truly merited the title of scientia Descartes’s term for genuine systematic knowledge based on reliable principles. A considerable portion of Descartes’s energies as a young man was devoted to pure mathematics: his essay on Geometry published in 1637 incorporated results discovered during the 1620s. But he also saw mathematics as the key to making progress in the applied sciences; his earliest work, the Compendium Musicae, written in 1618 and dedicated to Beeckman, applied quantitative principles to the study of musical harmony and dissonance. More generally, Descartes saw mathematics as a kind of paradigm for all human understanding: “those long chains composed of very simple and easy reasonings, which geometers customarily use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, gave me occasion to suppose that all the things which fall within the scope of human knowledge are interconnected in the same way” Discourse on the Method, Part II. In the course of his travels, Descartes found himself closeted, on November 10, 1619, in a “stove-heated room” in a town in southern G.y, where after a day of intense meditation, he had a series of vivid dreams that convinced him of his mission to found a new scientific and philosophical system. After returning to Paris for a time, he emigrated to Holland in 1628, where he was to live though with frequent changes of address for most of the rest of his life. By 1633 he had ready a treatise on cosmology and physics, Le Monde; but he cautiously withdrew the work from publication when he heard of the condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition for rejecting as Descartes himself did the traditional geocentric theory of the universe. But in 1637 Descartes released for publication, in , a sample of his scientific work: three essays entitled the Optics, Meteorology, and Geometry. Prefaced to that selection was an autobiographical introduction entitled Discourse on the Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and reaching the truth in the sciences. This work, which includes discussion of a number of scientific issues such as the circulation of the blood, contains in Part IV a summary of Descartes’s views on knowledge, certainty, and the metaphysical foundations of science. Criticisms of his arguments here led Descartes to compose his philosophical masterpiece, the Meditations on First Philosophy, published in Latin in 1641  a dramatic account of the voyage of discovery from universal doubt to certainty of one’s own existence, and the subsequent struggle to establish the existence of God, the nature and existence of the external world, and the relation between mind and body. The Meditations aroused enormous interest among Descartes’s contemporaries, and six sets of objections by celebrated philosophers and theologians including Mersenne, Hobbes, Arnauld, and Gassendi were published in the same volume as the first edition a seventh set, by the Jesuit Pierre Bourdin, was included in the second edition of 1642. A few years later, Descartes published, in Latin, a mammoth compendium of his metaphysical and scientific views, the Principles of Philosophy, which he hoped would become a  textbook to rival the standard texts based on Aristotle. In the later 1640s, Descartes became interested in questions of ethics and psychology, partly as a result of acute questions about the implications of his system raised by Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia in a long and fruitful correspondence. The fruits of this interest were published in 1649 in a lengthy  treatise entitled The Passions of the Soul. The same year, Descartes accepted after much hesitation an invitation to go to Stockholm to give philosophical instruction to Queen Christina of Sweden. He was required to provide tutorials at the royal palace at five o’clock in the morning, and the strain of this break in his habits he had maintained the lifelong custom of lying in bed late into the morning led to his catching pneumonia. He died just short of his fifty-fourth birthday. The Cartesian system. In a celebrated simile, Descartes described the whole of philosophy as like a tree: the roots are metaphysics, the trunk physics, and the branches are the various particular sciences, including mechanics, medicine, and morals. The analogy captures at least three important features of the Cartesian system. The first is its insistence on the essential unity of knowledge, which contrasts strongly with the Aristotelian conception of the sciences as a series of separate disciplines, each with its own methods and standards of precision. The sciences, as Descartes put it in an early notebook, are all “linked together” in a sequence that is in principle as simple and straightforward as the series of numbers. The second point conveyed by the tree simile is the utility of philosophy for ordinary living: the tree is valued for its fruits, and these are gathered, Descartes points out, “not from the roots or the trunk but from the ends of the branches”  the practical sciences. Descartes frequently stresses that his principal motivation is not abstract theorizing for its own sake: in place of the “speculative philosophy taught in the Schools,” we can and should achieve knowledge that is “useful in life” and that will one day make us “masters and possessors of nature.” Third, the likening of metaphysics or “first philosophy” to the roots of the tree nicely captures the Cartesian belief in what has come to be known as foundationalism  the view that knowledge must be constructed from the bottom up, and that nothing can be taken as established until we have gone back to first principles. Doubt and the foundations of belief. In Descartes’s central work of metaphysics, the Meditations, he begins his construction project by observing that many of the preconceived opinions he has accepted since childhood have turned out to be unreliable; so it is necessary, “once in a lifetime” to “demolish everything and start again, right from the foundations.” Descartes proceeds, in other words, by applying what is sometimes called his method of doubt, which is explained in the earlier Discourse on the Method: “Since I now wished to devote myself solely to the search for truth, I thought it necessary to . . . reject as if absolutely false everything in which one could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if I was left believing anything that was entirely indubitable.” In the Meditations we find this method applied to produce a systematic critique of previous beliefs, as follows. Anything based on the senses is potentially suspect, since “I have found by experience that the senses sometimes deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.” Even such seemingly straightforward judgments as “I am sitting here by the fire” may be false, since there is no guarantee that my present experience is not a dream. The dream argument as it has come to be called leaves intact the truths of mathematics, since “whether I am awake or asleep two and three make five”; but Descartes now proceeds to introduce an even more radical argument for doubt based on the following dilemma. If there is an omnipotent God, he could presumably cause me to go wrong every time I count two and three; if, on the other hand, there is no God, then I owe my origins not to a powerful and intelligent creator, but to some random series of imperfect causes, and in this case there is even less reason to suppose that my basic intuitions about mathematics are reliable. By the end of the First Meditation, Descartes finds himself in a morass of wholesale doubt, which he dramatizes by introducing an imaginary demon “of the utmost power and cunning” who is systematically deceiving him in every possible way. Everything I believe in  “the sky, the earth and all external things”  might be illusions that the demon has devised in order to trick me. Yet this very extremity of doubt, when pushed as far as it will go, yields the first indubitable truth in the Cartesian quest for knowledge  the existence of the thinking subject. “Let the demon deceive me as much as he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I think I am something. . . . I am, I exist, is certain, as often as it is put forward by me or conceived in the mind.” Elsewhere, Descartes expresses this cogito argument in the famous phrase “Cogito ergo sum” “I am thinking, therefore I exist”. Having established his own existence, Descartes proceeds in the Third Meditation to make an inventory of the ideas he finds within him, among which he identifies the idea of a supremely perfect being. In a much criticized causal argument he reasons that the representational content or “objective reality” of this idea is so great that it cannot have originated from inside his own imperfect mind, but must have been planted in him by an actual perfect being  God. The importance of God in the Cartesian system can scarcely be overstressed. Once the deity’s existence is established, Descartes can proceed to reinstate his belief in the world around him: since God is perfect, and hence would not systematically deceive, the strong propensity he has given us to believe that many of our ideas come from external objects must, in general, be sound; and hence the external world exists Sixth Meditation. More important still, Descartes uses the deity to set up a reliable method for the pursuit of truth. Human beings, since they are finite and imperfect, often go wrong; in particular, the data supplied by the senses is often, as Descartes puts it, “obscure and confused.” But each of us can nonetheless avoid error, provided we remember to withhold judgment in such doubtful cases and confine ourselves to the “clear and distinct” perceptions of the pure intellect. A reliable intellect was God’s gift to man, and if we use it with the greatest posDescartes, René Descartes, René 225   225 sible care, we can be sure of avoiding error Fourth Meditation. In this central part of his philosophy, Descartes follows in a long tradition going back to Augustine with its ultimate roots in Plato that in the first place is skeptical about the evidence of the senses as against the more reliable abstract perceptions of the intellect, and in the second place sees such intellectual knowledge as a kind of illumination derived from a higher source than man’s own mind. Descartes frequently uses the ancient metaphor of the “natural light” or “light of reason” to convey this notion that the fundamental intuitions of the intellect are inherently reliable. The label ‘rationalist’, which is often applied to Descartes in this connection, can be misleading, since he certainly does not rely on reason alone: in the development of his scientific theories he allows a considerable role to empirical observation in the testing of hypotheses and in the understanding of the mechanisms of nature his “vortex theory” of planetary revolutions is based on observations of the behavior of whirlpools. What is true, nonetheless, is that the fundamental building blocks of Cartesian science are the innate ideas chiefly those of mathematics whose reliability Descartes takes as guaranteed by their having been implanted in the mind by God. But this in turn gives rise to a major problem for the Cartesian system, which was first underlined by some of Descartes’s contemporaries notably Mersenne and Arnauld, and which has come to be known as the Cartesian circle. If the reliability of the clear and distinct perceptions of the intellect depends on our knowledge of God, then how can that knowledge be established in the first place? If the answer is that we can prove God’s existence from premises that we clearly and distinctly perceive, then this seems circular; for how are we entitled, at this stage, to assume that our clear and distinct perceptions are reliable? Descartes’s attempts to deal with this problem are not entirely satisfactory, but his general answer seems to be that there are some propositions that are so simple and transparent that, so long as we focus on them, we can be sure of their truth even without a divine guarantee. Cartesian science and dualism. The scientific system that Descartes had worked on before he wrote the Meditations and that he elaborated in his later work, the Principles of Philosophy, attempts wherever possible to reduce natural phenomena to the quantitative descriptions of arithmetic and geometry: “my consideration of matter in corporeal things,” he says in the Principles, “involves absolutely nothing apart from divisions, shapes and motions.” This connects with his metaphysical commitment to relying only on clear and distinct ideas. In place of the elaborate apparatus of the Scholastics, with its plethora of “substantial forms” and “real qualities,” Descartes proposes to mathematicize science. The material world is simply an indefinite series of variations in the shape, size, and motion of the single, simple, homogeneous matter that he terms res extensa “extended substance”. Under this category he includes all physical and biological events, even complex animal behavior, which he regards as simply the result of purely mechanical processes for non-human animals as mechanical automata, see Discourse, Part V. But there is one class of phenomena that cannot, on Descartes’s view, be handled in this way, namely conscious experience. Thought, he frequently asserts, is completely alien to, and incompatible with, extension: it occupies no space, is unextended and indivisible. Hence Descartes puts forward a dualistic theory of substance: in addition to the res extensa that makes up the material universe, there is res cogitans, or thinking substance, which is entirely independent of matter. And each conscious individual is a unique thinking substance: “This ‘I’  that is, the soul, by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body, and would not fail to be what it is even if the body did not exist.” Descartes’s arguments for the incorporeality of the soul were challenged by his contemporaries and have been heavily criticized by subsequent commentators. In the Discourse and the Second Meditation, he lays great stress on his ability to form a conception of himself as an existing subject, while at the same time doubting the existence of any physical thing; but this, as the critics pointed out, seems inadequate to establish the conclusion that he is a res cogitans  a being whose whole essence consists simply in thought. I may be able to imagine myself without a body, but this hardly proves that I could in reality exist without one see further the Synopsis to the Meditations. A further problem is that our everyday experience testifies to the fact that we are not incorporeal beings, but very much creatures of flesh and blood. “Nature teaches me by the sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on,” Descartes admits in the Sixth Meditation, “that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely Descartes, René Descartes, René 226   226 joined and as it were intermingled with it.” Yet how can an incorporeal soul interact with the body in this way? In his later writings, Descartes speaks of the “union of soul and body” as a “primitive notion” see letters to Elizabeth of May 21 and June 28, 1643; by this he seems to have meant that, just as there are properties such as length that belong to body alone, and properties such as understanding  that belong to mind alone, so there are items such as sensations that are irreducibly psychophysical, and that belong to me insofar as I am an embodied consciousness. The explanation of such psychophysical events was the task Descartes set himself in his last work, The Passions of the Soul; here he developed his theory that the pineal gland in the brain was the “seat of the soul,” where data from the senses were received via the nervous system, and where bodily movements were initiated. But despite the wealth of physiological detail Descartes provides, the central philosophical problems associated with his dualistic account of humans as hybrid entities made up of physical body and immaterial soul are, by common consent, not properly sorted out. Influence. Despite the philosophical difficulties that beset the Cartesian system, Descartes’s vision of a unified understanding of reality has retained a powerful hold on scientists and philosophers ever since. His insistence that the path to progress in science lay in the direction of quantitative explanations has been substantially vindicated. His attempt to construct a system of knowledge by starting from the subjective awareness of the conscious self has been equally important, if only because so much of the epistemology of our own time has been a reaction against the autocentric perspective from which Descartes starts out. As for the Cartesian theory of the mind, it is probably fair to say that the dualistic approach is now widely regarded as raising more problems than it solves. But Descartes’s insistence that the phenomena of conscious experience are recalcitrant to explanation in purely physical terms remains deeply influential, and the cluster of profound problems that he raised about the nature of the human mind and its relation to the material world are still very far from being adequately resolved.  Cartesianism -- Elizabeth of Bohemia 160, G. Princess whose philosophical reputation rests on her correspondence with Descartes. The most heavily discussed portion of this correspondence focuses on the relationship between the mind and the body and on Descartes’s claim that the mind-body union is a simple notion. Her discussions of free will and of the nature of the sovereign good also have philosophical interest. 

Grice, in “Gli atti linguistici: aspetti e problemi di filosofia del lignuaggio.” Campi del sapere/Feltrinelli.  

Levi, filosofo italiano – Italian philosopher of Jewish descent. Author of “Storia della filosofia romana.”

Ferrero, Italian philosopher, author of “Pigatorismo nel mondo romano.”

Garin, Italian philosopher, author of a very rich, “La cultura filosofica del rinascimento italiano.” And “L’umanesimo italiano” – Grice was Lit. Hum. Oxon, so he knew.

Acri, Italian philosopher, author of an essay on Plato’s and Vico’s theory of ideas. “Abbozzo”

Alberti – Italian philosopher, on ‘aesthetics.’ Cf. Grice on sensation.

Losurdo, Italian philosopher, expert not on Grice, but Nietzsche, “Nietzsche, ribelle aristocratico”

Giornale critico della filosofia italiana.

Giovanni, p. d. “Positivismo italiano.”

Cassiodoro: noble Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Cassiodoro," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia

cassirer: philosopher and intellectual historian. He was born in the G. city of Breslau now Wroclaw, Poland and educated at various G. universities. He completed his studies iat Marburg under Hermann Cohen, founder of the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism. Cassirer lectured at Berlin before accepting a professorship at the newly founded  of Hamburg. With the rise of Nazism he left Germany, going first to a visiting appointment at (of all places), All Souls, Oxford and then to a professorship at Göteborg, Sweden. Seeing that Oxford didn’t care for him nor he for Oxford, he went to the New World; he taught first at Yale in New Haven, on the Long Island Sound, and then at Columbia. Cassirer’s oeuvre may be divided into those in the history of philosophy and culture and those that present his own systematic thought. The former include major editions of Leibniz and Kant; “The Problem of Knowledge,” which traces the subject from Nicholas of Cusa to the twentieth century; and individual works on Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Rousseau, Goethe, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and English Platonism, of all movements. The latter, systematic, oeuvre, include his masterpiece, “Symbolic Form,” which presents culture based on types of symbolism and individual oeuvre concerned with problems in philosophy. Two of his best-known essays are “An Essay on Man” and “The Myth of the State.” Cassirer did not consider his systematic philosophy and his historical studies as separate endeavors; each grounded the other. Because of his involvement with the Marburg School, his philosophical position is frequently but mistakenly typed as neo-Kantian. Kant is an important influence on him, but so are Hegel, Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Goethe, Leibniz, and Vico. Cassirer derives his principal philosophical concept, that of “symbolic form,” most directly from Heinrich Hertz’s conception of notation in mechanics and the conception of the “symbol” in art of the Hegelian aesthetician, Friedrich Theodor Vischer. In a wider sense his conception of a “symbolic form” is a transformation of “idea” and “form” within the whole tradition of philosophical idealism. Cassirer’s conception of the “symbolic form” is NOT based, as Grice’s and Peirce’s isn’t, on a distinction between the symbolic form and the literal form. In Cassirer’s view all human knowledge depends on the power to form experience through some type of “symbol.”. The forms of human knowledge are coextensive with forms of human culture. The form Cassirer most often analyzes is language. Language as a symbolic form yields to a total system of human knowledge and culture that is the subject matter of philosophy. conception of the “symbol form” has influenced a few Griceian with continental tendendies. His studies of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment still stand as groundbreaking works in intellectual history. 

griceian casuistry: the case-analysis approach to the interpretation of general moral rules. Casuistry starts with paradigm cases of how and when a given general moral rule should be applied, and then reasons by analogy to cases in which the proper application of the rule is less obvious  e.g., a case in which lying is the only way for a priest not to betray a secret revealed in confession. The point of considering the series of cases is to ascertain the morally relevant similarities and differences between cases. Casuistry’s heyday was the first half of the seventeenth century. Reacting against casuistry’s popularity with the Jesuits and against its tendency to qualify general moral rules, Pascal penned a polemic against casuistry from which the term never recovered see his Provincial Letters, 1656. But the kind of reasoning to which the term refers is flourishing in contemporary practical ethics.

Casalegno, paolo. Italian philosopher – author of “H. P. Grice” in “Filosofia del linguaggio.”

categorical theory: H. P. Grice lectured at Oxford on Aristotle’s Categories in joint seminars with J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson,  a theory all of whose models are isomorphic. Because of its weak expressive power, in first-order logic with identity only theories with a finite model can be categorical; without identity no theories are categorical. A more interesting property, therefore, is being categorical in power: a theory is categorical in power a when the theory has, up to isomorphism, only one model with a domain of cardinality a. Categoricity in power shows the capacity to characterize a structure completely, only limited by cardinality. For example, the first-order theory of dense order without endpoints is categorical in power w the cardinality of the natural numbers. The first-order theory of simple discrete orderings with initial element, the ordering of the natural numbers, is not categorical in power w. There are countable discrete orders, not isomorphic to the natural numbers, that are elementary equivalent to it, i.e., have the same elementary, first-order theory. In first-order logic categorical theories are complete. This is not necessarily true for extensions of first-order logic for which no completeness theorem holds. In such a logic a set of axioms may be categorical without providing an informative characterization of the theory of its unique model. The term ‘elementary equivalence’ was introduced around 6 by Tarski for the property of being indistinguishable by elementary means. According to Oswald Veblen, who first used the term ‘categorical’ in 4, in a discussion of the foundations of geometry, that term was suggested to him by the  pragmatist John Dewey. 

categoricity: Grice distinguishes a meta-category, as categoricity, from category itself. He gave seminars on Aristotle’s categories at Oxford in joint seminars with J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson. the semantic property belonging to a set of sentences, a “postulate set,” that implicitly defines completely describes, or characterizes up to isomorphism the structure of its intended interpretation or standard model. The best-known categorical set of sentences is the postulate set for number theory attributed to Peano, which completely characterizes the structure of an arithmetic progression. This structure is exemplified by the system of natural numbers with zero as distinguished element and successor addition of one as distinguished function. Other exemplifications of this structure are obtained by taking as distinguished element an arbitrary integer, taking as distinguished function the process of adding an arbitrary positive or negative integer and taking as universe of discourse or domain the result of repeated application of the distinguished function to the distinguished element. See, e.g., Russell’s Introduction to the Mathematical Philosophy, 8. More precisely, a postulate set is defined to be categorical if every two of its models satisfying interpretations or realizations are isomorphic to each other, where, of course, two interpretations are isomorphic if between their respective universes of discourse there exists a one-to-one correspondence by which the distinguished elements, functions, relations, etc., of the one are mapped exactly onto those of the other. The importance of the analytic geometry of Descartes involves the fact that the system of points of a geometrical line with the “left-of relation” distinguished is isomorphic to the system of real numbers with the “less-than” relation distinguished. Categoricity, the ideal limit of success for the axiomatic method considered as a method for characterizing subject matter rather than for reorganizing a science, is known to be impossible with respect to certain subject matters using certain formal languages. The concept of categoricity can be traced back at least as far as Dedekind; the word is due to Dewey. 

category: H. P. Grice and J. L. Austin, “Categories.” H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson, “Categories.” an ultimate class. Categories are the highest genera of entities in the world. They may contain species but are not themselves species of any higher genera. Aristotle, the first philosopher to discuss categories systematically, listed ten, including substance, quality, quantity, relation, place, and time. If a set of categories is complete, then each entity in the world will belong to a category and no entity will belong to more than one category. A prominent example of a set of categories is Descartes’s dualistic classification of mind and matter. This example brings out clearly another feature of categories: an attribute that can belong to entities in one category cannot be an attribute of entities in any other category. Thus, entities in the category of matter have extension and color while no entity in the category of mind can have extension or color. 

category mistake. Grice’s example: You’re the cream in my coffee. Usually a metaphor is a conversational implicaturum due to a category mistake – But since obviously the mistake is intentional it is not really a mistake! Grice prefers to speak of ‘categorial falsity.’ What Ryle has in mind is different and he does mean ‘mistake.’ the placing of an entity in the wrong category. In one of Ryle’s examples, to place the activity of exhibiting team spirit in the same class with the activities of pitching, batting, and catching is to make a category mistake; exhibiting team spirit is not a special function like pitching or batting but instead a way those special functions are performed. A second use of ‘category mistake’ is to refer to the attribution to an entity of a property which that entity cannot have not merely does not happen to have, as in ‘This memory is violet’ or, to use an example from Carnap, ‘Caesar is a prime number’. These two kinds of category mistake may seem different, but both involve misunderstandings of the natures of the things being talked about. It is thought that they go beyond simple error or ordinary mistakes, as when one attributes a property to a thing which that thing could have but does not have, since category mistakes involve attributions of properties e.g., being a special function to things e.g., team spirit that those things cannot have. According to Ryle, the test for category differences depends on whether replacement of one expression for another in the same sentence results in a type of unintelligibility that he calls “absurdity.” 

category theory, H. P. Grice lectured on Aristotle’s categories in joint seminars at Oxford with J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson, a mathematical theory that studies the universal properties of structures via their relationships with one another. A category C consists of two collections Obc and Morc , the objects and the morphisms of C, satisfying the following conditions: i for each pair a, b of objects there is associated a collection Morc a, b of morphisms such that each member of Morc belongs to one of these collections; ii for each object a of Obc , there is a morphism ida , called the identity on a; iii a composition law associating with each morphism f: a P b and each morphism g: b P c a morphism gf:a P c, called the composite of f and g; iv for morphisms f: a P b, g: b P c, and h: c P d, the equation hgf % hgf holds; v for any morphism f: a P b, we have idbf % f and fida % f. Sets with specific structures together with a collection of mappings preserving these structures are categories. Examples: 1 sets with functions between them; 2 groups with group homomorphisms; 3 topological spaces with continuous functions; 4 sets with surjections instead of arbitrary maps constitute a different category. But a category need not be composed of sets and set-theoretical maps. Examples: 5 a collection of propositions linked by the relation of logical entailment is a category and so is any preordered set; 6 a monoid taken as the unique object and its elements as the morphisms is a category. The properties of an object of a category are determined by the morphisms that are coming out of and going in this object. Objects with a universal property occupy a key position. Thus, a terminal object a is characterized by the following universal property: for any object b there is a unique morphism from b to a. A singleton set is a terminal object in the category of sets. The Cartesian product of sets, the product of groups, and the conjunction of propositions are all terminal objects in appropriate categories. Thus category theory unifies concepts and sheds a new light on the notion of universality. 

Grice’s four conversational categories – the category of conversational mode: While Grice could be jocular, in an English way, about the number of maxims within each category – he surely would not like to joke as far as to be cavalier about the NUMBER of categories: Four was the number of functions from which the twelve categories rramify, Kant, or “Ariskant,” but Grice takes the function for the category -- four is for Ariskantian Grice. This is Aristotle’s hexis. This category posed a special conceptual problem to Grice. Recall that his categories are invoked only by their power to generate conversational implciata. But a conversational implicaturum is non-detachable. That is, being based on universalistic principles of general rationality, it cannot attach to an EXPRESSION, less so to the ‘meaning’ of an EXPRESSION: “if” and “provided” are REALISATIONS of the concept of the conditionality. Now, the conversational supra-maxim, ‘be perspicuous’ [sic], is supposed to apply NOT to the content, or matter, but to the FORM. (Strictly, quantitas and qualitas applies to matter, RELATIO applies to the link between at least two matters). Grice tweaks things in such a way that he is happy, and so am I. This is a pun on Aristkant’s Kategorie (Ammonius, tropos, Boëthius, modus, Kant Modalitat). Gesichtspuncte der Modalität in assertorische, apodiktische und problematische hat sich aus der Aristotelischen Eintheilung hervorgebildet (Anal. Dr. 1, 2): 7@ợc gócois atv n 100 incozy h kỹ kvayxns Úndozav û toù {VJÉZEo fai Úndozev: Doch geht diese Aristotelische Stelle vielmehr auf die analogen objectiven Verhältnisse, als auf den subjectiven Gewissheitsgrad. Der Zusatz Svvatóv, įvsezóuevov, és åviyans, jedoch auch eine adverbiale Bestimmung wie taméws in dem Satze ý σελήνη ταχέως αποκαθίσταται, heisst bei Ammonius τρόπος (zu περί ερμ. Cap. 12) und bei Boëthius modus. Kant (Kritik der r. Vern. § 9-11; Prolegom. $ 21, Log. § 30) gründet die Eintheilung nach der Modalität auf die modalen Kategorien: Möglichkeit und Unmöglichkeit, Dasein und Nichtsein, Nothwendigkeit und Zufälligkeit, wobei jedoch die Zusammenstellung der Unmöglichkeit, die eine negative Nothwendigkeit ist, mit der Möglichkeit, und ebenso der Zufälligkeit, die das nicht als nothwendig erkannte Dasein bezeichnet, mit der Nothwendigkeit eine Ungenauigkeit enthält: die Erkenntniss der Unmöglichkeit ist nicht ein problematisches, sondern ein (negativ-) apodiktisches Urtheil (was Kant in der Anwendung selbst anerkennt, indem er z. B. Krit. der r. V. S. 191 die Formel: es ist unmöglich etc. als Ausdruck einer apodiktischen Gewissheit betrachtet), und die Erkenntniss des Zufälligen ist nicht ein apodiktisches, sondern ein assertorisches Urtheil. Ausserdem aber hat Kant das subjective und objective Element in den Kategorien der Qualität und Modalität nicht bestimmt genug unterschieden.

Grice’s four conversational categories – the category of conversational quality: While Grice could be cavalier about the number of maxims falling under the category of conversational quality, he surely would not be cavalier about the number of categories themselves. Four were the functions from which the twelve categories ramify for Ariskant, and four were for Grice: he takes the function from Kant, but the spirit from Aristotle.  This is Aristotle’s universal, poiotes. This was originally the desideratum of conversational candour. At that point, there was no Kantian scheme of categories in the horizon. Candour Grice arbitrarily contrasts with clarity – and so the desideratum of conversational candour sometimes clashes with the desideratum of conversational clarity. One may not be able to provide a less convoluted utterance (“It is raining”) but use the less clear, but more candid, “It might be raining, for all I know.” A pun on Aristkan’s Kategorie, poiotes, qualitas, Qualitat.  Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are 'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three cubits long', of quality, such attributes as 'white', 'grammatical'.

Grice’s four conversational categories – the category of conversational quantity: While Grice could be cavalier about the number of maxims falling under quantity, he was not about the number of categories itself. Four was the number of functions out of which the twelve categories spring for Ariskant, and four was for Grice. He takes the function (the letter) from Kant, but the spirit from Aristotle. This is Aristotle’s universal, posotes. Grice would often use ‘a fortiori,’ and then it dawned on him. “All I need is a principle of conversational fortitude. This will give the Oxonians the Graeco-Roman pedigree they deserve.’  a pun on Ariskant’s Kategorie, posotes, quantitas, Quantitat. Grice expands this as ‘quantity of information,’ or ‘informative content’ – which then as he recognises overlaps with the category of conversational quality, because ‘false information’ is a misnomer. Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are 'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three cubits long'

Grice’s four conversational categories – the category of conversational relation: While Grice could be cavalier about the number of maxims under the category of relation, he was not about the number of categories: four were the number of functions out of which the twelve categories spring for Ariskant and four were for Grice: he takes the letter (function) from Kant, and the spirit from Aristotle. This is Aristotle’s ‘pros ti.’ f there are categories of being, and categories of thought, and categories of expression, surely there is room for the ‘conversational category.’ A pun on Ariskant’s Kategorie (pros ti, ad aliquid, Relation). Surely a move has to relate to the previous move, and should include a tag as to what move will relate. Expressions which are in no way composite signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection. To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are 'man' or 'the horse', of quantity, such terms as 'two cubits long' or 'three cubits long', of quality, such attributes as 'white', 'grammatical'. 'Double', 'half', 'greater', fall under the category of relation.

Cattaneo: essential Italian philosopher. Refs.: Luigi Speranza, "Grice e Cattaneo," per Il Club Anglo-Italiano, The Swimming-Pool Library, Villa Grice, Liguria, Italia.

causatum: aetiologicum: from aitia: while Grice would prefer ‘cause,’ he thought that the etymology of Grecian ‘aitia,’ in a legal context, was interesting. On top, he was dissatisfied that Foucault never realised that ‘les mots et les choses,’ etymologically, means, ‘motus et causae.’ Grecian, cause. Originally referring to responsibility for a crime, this Grecian term came to be used by philosophers to signify causality in a somewhat broader sense than the English ‘cause’  the traditional rendering of aitia  can convey. An aitia is any answer to a why-question. According to Aristotle, how such questions ought to be answered is a philosophical issue addressed differently by different philosophers. He himself distinguishes four types of answers, and thus four aitiai, by distinguishing different types of questions: 1 Why is the statue heavy? Because it is made of bronze material aitia. 2 Why did Persians invade Athens? Because the Athenians had raided their territory moving or efficient aitia. 3 Why are the angles of a triangle equal to two right angles? Because of the triangle’s nature formal aitia. 4 Why did someone walk after dinner? Because or for the sake of his health final aitia. Only the second of these would typically be called a cause in English. Though some render aitia as ‘explanatory principle’ or ‘reason’, these expressions inaptly suggest a merely mental existence; instead, an aitia is a thing or aspect of a thing. The study of the causatum in Grice is key. It appears in “Meaning,” because he starts discussing Stevenson whom Grice dubs a ‘causalist.’ It continues with Grice on ‘knowledge,’ and ‘willing’ in “Intention and Uncertainty.” Also in “Aspects of reasoning.” Is the causatum involved in the communicatum. Grice relies on this only in Meaning Revisited, where he presents a transcendental argument for the justification. This is what is referred in the literature as “H. P. Grice’s Triangle.” Borrowing from Aristotle in De Interpretatione, Grice speaks of three corners of the triangle and correspondences obtaining between them. There’s a psychophysical correspondence between the soul of the emissor, the soul of the emissee, and the shared experience of the denotata of the communication device the emissor employs. Then there’s the psychosemiotic correspondence between the communication device and the state of the soul in the emissor that is transferred, in a soul-to-soul transfer to the emissee. And finally, there is a semiophyiscal correspondence between the communication device and the world. When it comes to the causation, the belief that there is fire is caused by there being fire. The emissor wants to transfer his belief, and utters. “Smoke!”. The soul-to-soul transfer is effected. The fire that caused the smoke that caused the belief in the the emissor now causes a belief in the emissee. If that’s not a causal account of communication, I don’t know what it is. Grice is no expressionist in that a solipsistic telementational model is of no use if there is no ‘hookup’ as he puts it with the world that causes this ‘shared experience’ that is improved by the existence of a communication device.  Grice’s idea of ‘cause’ is his ‘bite’ on reality. He chooses ‘Phenomenalism’ as an enemy. Causal realism is at the heart of Grice’s programme. As an Oxonian, he was well aware that to trust a cause is to be anti-Cambridge, where they follow Hume’s and Kant’s scepticism. Grice uses ‘cause’ rather casually. His most serious joke is “Charles I’s decapitation willed his death” – but it is not easy to trace a philosopher who explicitly claim that ‘to cause’ is ‘to will.’ For in God the means and the end preexist in the cause as willed together. Causation figures large in Grice, notably re: the perceptum. The agent perceives that the pillar box is red. The cause is that the pillar box is red. Out of that, Grice constructs a whole theory of conversation. Why would someone just report what a THING SEEMS to him when he has no doubt that it was THE THING that caused the thing to SEEM red to him? Applying some sort of helpfulness, it works: the addressee is obviously more interested in what the thing IS, not what it seems. A sense-datum is not something you can eat. An apple is. So, the assumption is that a report of what a thing IS is more relevant than a report about what a thing SEEMS. So,  Grice needs to find a rationale that justifies, ceteris paribus, the utterance of “The thing seems phi.” Following helpfulness, U utters “The thing seems phi” when the U is not in a position to say what the thing IS phi. The denial, “The thing is not phi” is in the air, and also the doubt, “The thing may not be phi.” Most without a philosophical background who do not take Grice’s joke of echoing Kant’s categories (Kant had 12, not 4!) play with quantitas, qualitas, relatio and modus. Grice in “Causal” uses ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ but grants he won’t ‘determine’ in what way ‘the thing seems phi’ is ‘weaker’ than ‘the thing is phi.’ It might well be argued that it’s STRONGER: the thing SEEEMS TO BE phi.’ In the previous “Introduction to Logical Theory,” Strawson just refers to Grice’s idea of a ‘pragmatic rule’ to the effect that one utter the LOGICALLY stronger proposition. Let’s revise dates. Whereas Grice says that his confidence in the success of “Causal,” he ventured with Strawson’s “Intro,” Strawson is citing Grice already. Admittedly, Strawson adds, “in a different context.” But Grice seems pretty sure that “The thing seems phi” is WEAKER than “The thing is phi.” In 1961 he is VERY CLEAR that while what he may have said to Strawson that Strawson reported in that footnote was in terms of LOGICAL STRENGTH (in terms of entailment, for extensional contexts). In “Causal,” Grice is clear that he does not think LOGICAL STRENGTH applies to intensional contexts. In later revisions, it is not altogether clear how he deals with the ‘doubt or denial.’ He seems to have been more interested in refuting G. A. Paul (qua follower of Witters) than anything else. In his latest reformulation of the principle, now a conversational category, he is not specific about phenomenalist reports. A causal law is a statement describing a regular and invariant connection between types of events or states, where the connections involved are causal in some sense. When one speaks of causal laws as distinguished from laws that are not 123 category mistake causal law   123 causal, the intended distinction may vary. Sometimes, a law is said to be causal if it relates events or states occurring at successive times, also called a law of succession: e.g., ‘Ingestion of strychnine leads to death.’ A causal law in this sense contrasts with a law of coexistence, which connects events or states occurring at the same time e.g., the Wiedemann-Franz law relating thermal and electric conductivity in metals. One important kind of causal law is the deterministic law. Causal laws of this kind state exceptionless connections between events, while probabilistic or statistical laws specify probability relationships between events. For any system governed by a set of deterministic laws, given the state of a system at a time, as characterized by a set of state variables, these laws will yield a unique state of the system for any later time or, perhaps, at any time, earlier or later. Probabilistic laws will yield, for a given antecedent state of a system, only a probability value for the occurrence of a certain state at a later time. The laws of classical mechanics are often thought to be paradigmatic examples of causal laws in this sense, whereas the laws of quantum mechanics are claimed to be essentially probabilistic. Causal laws are sometimes taken to be laws that explicitly specify certain events as causes of certain other events. Simple laws of this kind will have the form ‘Events of kind F cause events of kind G’; e.g., ‘Heating causes metals to expand’. A weaker related concept is this: a causal law is one that states a regularity between events which in fact are related as cause to effect, although the statement of the law itself does not say so laws of motion expressed by differential equations are perhaps causal laws in this sense. These senses of ‘causal law’ presuppose a prior concept of causation. Finally, causal laws may be contrasted with teleological laws, laws that supposedly describe how certain systems, in particular biological organisms, behave so as to achieve certain “goals” or “end states.” Such laws are sometimes claimed to embody the idea that a future state that does not as yet exist can exert an influence on the present behavior of a system. Just what form such laws take and exactly how they differ from ordinary laws have not been made wholly clear, however.  Grice was not too happy with the causal theory of proper names, the view that proper names designate what they name by virtue of a kind of causal connection to it. Perhaps his antipathy was due to the fact that he was Herbert Grice, and so was his father. This led Grice to start using once at Clifton and Oxford, “H. P.” and eventually, dropping the “Herbert” altogether and become “Paul Grice.” This view is a special case, and in some instances an unwarranted interpretation, of a direct reference view of names. On this approach, proper names, e.g., ‘Machiavelli’, are, as J. S. Mill wrote, “purely denotative. . . . they denote the individuals who are called by them; but they do not indicate or imply any attributes as belonging to those individuals” A System of Logic, 1879. Proper names may suggest certain properties to many competent speakers, but any such associated information is no part of the definition of the name. Names, on this view, have no definitions. What connects a name to what it names is not the latter’s satisfying some condition specified in the name’s definition. Names, instead, are simply attached to things, applied as labels, as it were. A proper name, once attached, becomes a socially available device for making the relevant name bearer a subject of discourse. On the other leading view, the descriptivist view, a proper name is associated with something like a definition. ‘Aristotle’, on this view, applies by definition to whoever satisfies the relevant properties  e.g., is ‘the teacher of Alexander the Great, who wrote the Nicomachean Ethics’. Russell, e.g., maintained that ordinary proper names which he contrasted with logically proper or genuine names have definitions, that they are abbreviated definite descriptions. Frege held that names have sense, a view whose proper interpretation remains in dispute, but is often supposed to be closely related to Russell’s approach. Others, most notably Searle, have defended descendants of the descriptivist view. An important variant, sometimes attributed to Frege, denies that names have articulable definitions, but nevertheless associates them with senses. And the bearer will still be, by definition as it were, the unique thing to satisfy the relevant mode of presentation. causal overdetermination causal theory of proper names 124   124 The direct reference approach is sometimes misleadingly called the causal theory of names. But the key idea need have nothing to do with causation: a proper name functions as a tag or label for its bearer, not as a surrogate for a descriptive expression. Whence the allegedly misleading term ‘causal theory of names’? Contemporary defenders of Mill’s conception like Keith Donnellan and Kripke felt the need to expand upon Mill’s brief remarks. What connects a present use of a name with a referent? Here Donnellan and Kripke introduce the notion of a “historical chains of communication.” As Kripke tells the story, a baby is baptized with a proper name. The name is used, first by those present at the baptism, subsequently by those who pick up the name in conversation, reading, and so on. The name is thus propagated, spread by usage “from link to link as if by a chain” Naming and Necessity, 0. There emerges a historical chain of uses of the name that, according to Donnellan and Kripke, bridges the gap between a present use of the name and the individual so named. This “historical chain of communication” is occasionally referred to as a “casual chain of communication.” The idea is that one’s use of the name can be thought of as a causal factor in one’s listener’s ability to use the name to refer to the same individual. However, although Kripke in Naming and Necessity does occasionally refer to the chain of communication as causal, he more often simply speaks of the chain of communication, or of the fact that the name has been passed “by tradition from link to link” p. 106. The causal aspect is not one that Kripke underscores. In more recent writings on the topic, as well as in lectures, Kripke never mentions causation in this connection, and Donnellan questions whether the chain of communication should be thought of as a causal chain. This is not to suggest that there is no view properly called a “causal theory of names.” There is such a view, but it is not the view of Kripke and Donnellan. The causal theory of names is a view propounded by physicalistically minded philosophers who desire to “reduce” the notion of “reference” to something more physicalistically acceptable, such as the notion of a causal chain running from “baptism” to later use. This is a view whose motivation is explicitly rejected by Kripke, and should be sharply distinguished from the more popular anti-Fregean approach sketched above. Causation is the relation between cause and effect, or the act of bringing about an effect, which may be an event, a state, or an object say, a statue. The concept of causation has long been recognized as one of fundamental philosophical importance. Hume called it “the cement of the universe”: causation is the relation that connects events and objects of this world in significant relationships. The concept of causation seems pervasively present in human discourse. It is expressed by not only ‘cause’ and its cognates but by many other terms, such as ‘produce’, ‘bring about’, ‘issue’, ‘generate’, ‘result’, ‘effect’, ‘determine’, and countless others. Moreover, many common transitive verbs “causatives”, such as ‘kill’, ‘break’, and ‘move’, tacitly contain causal relations e.g., killing involves causing to die. The concept of action, or doing, involves the idea that the agent intentionally causes a change in some object or other; similarly, the concept of perception involves the idea that the object perceived causes in the perceiver an appropriate perceptual experience. The physical concept of force, too, appears to involve causation as an essential ingredient: force is the causal agent of changes in motion. Further, causation is intimately related to explanation: to ask for an explanation of an event is, often, to ask for its cause. It is sometimes thought that our ability to make predictions, and inductive inference in general, depends on our knowledge of causal connections or the assumption that such connections are present: the knowledge that water quenches thirst warrants the predictive inference from ‘X is swallowing water’ to ‘X’s thirst will be quenched’. More generally, the identification and systematic description of causal relations that hold in the natural world have been claimed to be the preeminent aim of science. Finally, causal concepts play a crucial role in moral and legal reasoning, e.g., in the assessment of responsibilities and liabilities. Event causation is the causation of one event by another. A sequence of causally connected events is called a causal chain. Agent causation refers to the act of an agent person, object in bringing about a change; thus, my opening the window i.e., my causing the window to open is an instance of agent causation. There is a controversy as to whether agent causation is reducible to event causation. My opening the window seems reducible to event causation since in reality a certain motion of my arms, an event, causes the window to open. Some philosophers, however, have claimed that not all cases of agent causation are so reducible. Substantival causation is the creation of a genuinely new substance, or object, rather than causing changes in preexisting substances, or merely rearranging them. The possibility of substantival causation, at least in the natural world, has been disputed by some philosophers. Event causation, however, has been the primary focus of philosophical discussion in the modern and contemporary period. The analysis of event causation has been controversial. The following four approaches have been prominent: the regularity analysis, the counterfactual analysis, the manipulation analysis, and the probabilistic analysis. The heart of the regularity or nomological analysis, associated with Hume and J. S. Mill, is the idea that causally connected events must instantiate a general regularity between like kinds of events. More precisely: if c is a cause of e, there must be types or kinds of events, F and G, such that c is of kind F, e is of kind G, and events of kind F are regularly followed by events of kind G. Some take the regularity involved to be merely de facto “constant conjunction” of the two event types involved; a more popular view is that the regularity must hold as a matter of “nomological necessity”  i.e., it must be a “law.” An even stronger view is that the regularity must represent a causal law. A law that does this job of subsuming causally connected events is called a “covering” or “subsumptive” law, and versions of the regularity analysis that call for such laws are often referred to as the “covering-law” or “nomic-subsumptive” model of causality. The regularity analysis appears to give a satisfactory account of some aspects of our causal concepts: for example, causal claims are often tested by re-creating the event or situation claimed to be a cause and then observing whether a similar effect occurs. In other respects, however, the regularity account does not seem to fare so well: e.g., it has difficulty explaining the apparent fact that we can have knowledge of causal relations without knowledge of general laws. It seems possible to know, for instance, that someone’s contraction of the flu was caused by her exposure to a patient with the disease, although we know of no regularity between such exposures and contraction of the disease it may well be that only a very small fraction of persons who have been exposed to flu patients contract the disease. Do I need to know general regularities about itchings and scratchings to know that the itchy sensation on my left elbow caused me to scratch it? Further, not all regularities seem to represent causal connections e.g., Reid’s example of the succession of day and night; two successive symptoms of a disease. Distinguishing causal from non-causal regularities is one of the main problems confronting the regularity theorist. According to the counterfactual analysis, what makes an event a cause of another is the fact that if the cause event had not occurred the effect event would not have. This accords with the idea that cause is a condition that is sine qua non for the occurrence of the effect. The view that a cause is a necessary condition for the effect is based on a similar idea. The precise form of the counterfactual account depends on how counterfactuals are understood e.g., if counterfactuals are explained in terms of laws, the counterfactual analysis may turn into a form of the regularity analysis. The counterfactual approach, too, seems to encounter various difficulties. It is true that on the basis of the fact that if Larry had watered my plants, as he had promised, my plants would not have died, I could claim that Larry’s not watering my plants caused them to die. But it is also true that if George Bush had watered my plants, they would not have died; but does that license the claim that Bush’s not watering my plants caused them to die? Also, there appear to be many cases of dependencies expressed by counterfactuals that, however, are not cases of causal dependence: e.g., if Socrates had not died, Xanthippe would not have become a widow; if I had not raised my hand, I would not have signaled. The question, then, is whether these non-causal counterfactuals can be distinguished from causal counterfactuals without the use of causal concepts. There are also questions about how we could verify counterfactuals  in particular, whether our knowledge of causal counterfactuals is ultimately dependent on knowledge of causal laws and regularities. Some have attempted to explain causation in terms of action, and this is the manipulation analysis: the cause is an event or state that we can produce at will, or otherwise manipulate, to produce a certain other event as an effect. Thus, an event is a cause of another provided that by bringing about the first event we can bring about the second. This account exploits the close connection noted earlier between the concepts of action and cause, and highlights the important role that knowledge of causal connections plays in our control of natural events. However, as an analysis of the concept of cause, it may well have things backward: the concept of action seems to be a richer and more complex concept that presupposes the concept of cause, and an analysis of cause in terms of action could be accused of circularity. The reason we think that someone’s exposure to a flu patient was the cause of her catching the disease, notwithstanding the absence of an appropriate regularity even one of high probability, may be this: exposure to flu patients increases the probability of contracting the disease. Thus, an event, X, may be said to be a probabilistic cause of an event, Y, provided that the probability of the occurrence of Y, given that X has occurred, is greater than the antecedent probability of Y. To meet certain obvious difficulties, this rough definition must be further elaborated e.g., to eliminate the possibility that X and Y are collateral effects of a common cause. There is also the question whether probabilistic causation is to be taken as an analysis of the general concept of causation, or as a special kind of causal relation, or perhaps only as evidence indicating the presence of a causal relationship. Probabilistic causation has of late been receiving increasing attention from philosophers. When an effect is brought about by two independent causes either of which alone would have sufficed, one speaks of causal overdetermination. Thus, a house fire might have been caused by both a short circuit and a simultaneous lightning strike; either event alone would have caused the fire, and the fire, therefore, was causally overdetermined. Whether there are actual instances of overdetermination has been questioned; one could argue that the fire that would have been caused by the short circuit alone would not have been the same fire, and similarly for the fire that would have been caused by the lightning alone. The steady buildup of pressure in a boiler would have caused it to explode but for the fact that a bomb was detonated seconds before, leading to a similar effect. In such a case, one speaks of preemptive, or superseding, cause. We are apt to speak of causes in regard to changes; however, “unchanges,” e.g., this table’s standing here through some period of time, can also have causes: the table continues to stand here because it is supported by a rigid floor. The presence of the floor, therefore, can be called a sustaining cause of the table’s continuing to stand. A cause is usually thought to precede its effect in time; however, some have argued that we must allow for the possibility of a cause that is temporally posterior to its effect  backward causation sometimes called retrocausation. And there is no universal agreement as to whether a cause can be simultaneous with its effect  concurrent causation. Nor is there a general agreement as to whether cause and effect must, as a matter of conceptual necessity, be “contiguous” in time and space, either directly or through a causal chain of contiguous events  contiguous causation. The attempt to “analyze” causation seems to have reached an impasse; the proposals on hand seem so widely divergent that one wonders whether they are all analyses of one and the same concept. But each of them seems to address some important aspect of the variegated notion that we express by the term ‘cause’, and it may be doubted whether there is a unitary concept of causation that can be captured in an enlightening philosophical analysis. On the other hand, the centrality of the concept, both to ordinary practical discourse and to the scientific description of the world, is difficult to deny. This has encouraged some philosophers to view causation as a primitive, one that cannot be further analyzed. There are others who advocate the extreme view causal nihilism that causal concepts play no role whatever in the advanced sciences, such as fundamental physical theories of space-time and matter, and that the very notion of cause is an anthropocentric projection deriving from our confused ideas of action and power. Causatum -- Dretske, Fred b.2,  philosopher best known for his externalistic representational naturalism about experience, belief, perception, and knowledge. Educated at Purdue  and the  of Minnesota, he has taught at the  of Wisconsin 088 and Stanford  898. In Seeing and Knowing 9 Dretske develops an account of non-epistemic seeing, denying that seeing is believing  that for a subject S to see a dog, say, S must apply a concept to it dog, animal, furry. The dog must look some way to S S must visually differentiate the dog, but need not conceptually categorize it. This contrasts with epistemic seeing, where for S to see that a dog is before him, S would have to believe that it is a dog. In Knowledge and the Flow of Information 1, a mind-independent objective sense of ‘information’ is applied to propositional knowledge and belief content. “Information” replaced Dretske’s earlier notion of a “conclusive reason” 1. Knowing that p requires having a true belief caused or causally sustained by an event that carries the information that p. Also, the semantic content of a belief is identified with the most specific digitally encoded piece of information to which it becomes selectively sensitive during a period of learning. In Explaining Behavior 8, Dretske’s account of representation and misrepresentation takes on a teleological flavor. The semantic meaning of a structure is now identified with its indicator function. A structure recruited for a causal role of indicating F’s, and sustained in that causal role by this ability, comes to mean F  thereby providing a causal role for the content of cognitive states, and avoiding epiphenomenalism about semantic content. In Naturalizing the Mind 5, Dretske’s theory of meaning is applied to the problems of consciousness and qualia. He argues that the empirically significant features of conscious experience are exhausted by their functional and hence representational roles of indicating external sensible properties. He rejects the views that consciousness is composed of a higher-order hierarchy of mental states and that qualia are due to intrinsic, non-representational features of the underlying physical systems. Dretske is also known for his contributions on the nature of contrastive statements, laws of nature, causation, and epistemic non-closure, among other topics.  CAUSATUM -- Ducasse, C. J., philosopher of mind and aesthetician. He arrived in the United States in 0, received his Ph.D. from Harvard 2, and taught at the  of Washington 226 and Brown  658. His most important work is Nature, Mind and Death 1. The key to his general theory is a non-Humean view of causation: the relation of causing is triadic, involving i an initial event, ii the set of conditions under which it occurs, and iii a resulting event; the initial event is the cause, the resulting event is the effect. On the basis of this view he constructed a theory of categories  an explication of such concepts as those of substance, property, mind, matter, and body. Among the theses he defended were that minds are substances, that they causally interact with bodies, and that human beings are free despite every event’s having a cause. In A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life after Death 1, he concluded that “the balance of the evidence so far obtained is on the side of . . . survival.” Like Schopenhauer, whom he admired, Ducasse was receptive to the religious and philosophical writings of the Far East. He wrote with remarkable objectivity on the philosophical problems associated with so-called paranormal phenomena. Ducasse’s epistemological views are developed in Truth, Knowledge and Causation 8. He sets forth a realistic theory of perception he says, about sense-qualities, “Berkeley is right and the realists are wrong” and, of material things, “the realists are right and Berkeley is wrong”. He provides the classical formulation of the “adverbial theory” or sense-qualities, according to which such qualities are not objects of experience or awareness but ways of experiencing or of being aware. One does not perceive a red material object by sensing a red sense-datum; for then perceiving would involve three entities  i the perceiving subject, ii the red sense-datum, and iii the red material object. But one may perceive a red material object by sensing redly; then the only entities involved are i the perceiving subject and ii the material object. Ducasse observes that, analogously, although it may be natural to say “dancing a waltz,” it would be more accurate to speak of “dancing waltzily.” 

causa sui: an expression used by Grice’s mother, a High Church, as applied to God to mean in part that God owes his existence to nothing other than himself. It does not mean that God somehow brought himself into existence. The idea is that the very nature of God logically requires that he exists. What accounts for the existence of a being that is causa sui is its own nature. 

cavellian implicaturum: c. s.,  b.6,  philosopher whose work has explored skepticism and its consequences. He was Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Value Theory at Harvard from 3 until 7. Central to Cavell’s thought is the view that skepticism is not a theoretical position to be refuted by philosophical theory or dismissed as a mere misuse of ordinary language; it is a reflection of the fundamental limits of human knowledge of the self, of others, and of the external world, limits that must be accepted  in his term “acknowledged”  because the refusal to do so results in illusion and risks tragedy. Cavell’s work defends J. L. Austin from both positivism and deconstructionism Must We Mean What We Say?, 9, and The Pitch of Philosophy, 4, but not because Cavell is an “ordinary language” philosopher. Rather, his defense of Austin has combined with his response to skepticism to make him a philosopher of the ordinary: he explores the conditions of the possibility and limits of ordinary language, ordinary knowledge, ordinary action, and ordinary human relationships. He uses both the resources of ordinary language and the discourse of philosophers, such as Vitters, Heidegger, Thoreau, and Emerson, and of the arts. Cavell has explored the ineliminability of skepticism in Must We Mean What We Say?, notably in its essay on King Lear, and has developed his analysis in his 9 magnum opus, The Claim of Reason. He has examined the benefits of acknowledging the limits of human self-understanding, and the costs of refusing to do so, in a broad range of contexts from film The World Viewed, 1; Pursuits of Happiness, 1; and Contesting Tears, 6 to  philosophy The Senses of Walden, 2; and the chapters on Emerson in This New Yet Unapproachable America, 9, and Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, 0. A central argument in The Claim of Reason develops Cavell’s approach by looking at Vitters’s notion of criteria. Criteria are not rules for the use of our words that can guarantee the correctness of the claims we make by them; rather, criteria bring out what we claim by using the words we do. More generally, in making claims to knowledge, undertaking actions, and forming interpersonal relationships, we always risk failure, but it is also precisely in that room for risk that we find the possibility of freedom. This argument is indebted not only to Vitters but also to Kant, especially in the Critique of Judgment. Cavell has used his view as a key to understanding classics of the theater and film. Regarding such tragic figures as Lear, he argues that their tragedies result from their refusal to accept the limits of human knowledge and human love, and their insistence on an illusory absolute and pure love. The World Viewed argues for a realistic approach to film, meaning that we should acknowledge that our cognitive and emotional responses to films are responses to the realities of the human condition portrayed in them. This “ontology of film” prepared the way for Cavell’s treatment of the genre of comedies of remarriage in Pursuits of Happiness. It also grounds his treatment of melodrama in Contesting Tears, which argues that human beings must remain tragically unknown to each other if the limits to our knowledge of each other are not acknowledged. In The Claim of Reason and later works Cavell has also contributed to moral philosophy by his defense  against Rawls’s critique of “moral perfectionism”  of “Emersonian perfectionism”: the view that no general principles of conduct, no matter how well established, can ever be employed in practice without the ongoing but never completed perfection of knowledge of oneself and of the others on and with whom one acts. Cavell’s Emersonian perfectionism is thus another application of his Vittersian and Kantian recognition that rules must always be supplemented by the capacity for judgment. 

cavendish: m. duchess of Newcastle, English author of some dozen works in a variety of forms. Her central philosophical interest was the developments in natural science of her day. Her earliest works endorsed a kind of atomism, but her settled view, in Philosophical Letters 1664, Observations upon Experimental Philosophy 1666, and Grounds of Natural Philosophy 1668, was a kind of organic materialism. Cavendish argues for a hierarchy of increasingly fine matter, capable of self-motion. Philosophical Letters, among other matters, raises problems for the notion of inert matter found in Descartes, and Observations upon Experimental Philosophy criticizes microscopists such as Hooke for committing a double error, first of preferring the distortions introduced by instruments to unaided vision and second of preferring sense to reason. 

celsus: philosopher known only as the author of a work called “Alethes logos,” which is quoted extensively by Origen of Alexandria in his response, Against Celsus. “Alethes logos” is mainly important because it is the first anti-Christian polemic of which we have significant knowledge. Origen considers Celsus to be an Epicurean, but he is uncertain about this. There are no traces of Epicureanism in Origen’s quotations from Celsus, which indicate instead that he is a platonist, whose conception of an unnameable first deity transcending being and knowable only by “synthesis, analysis, or analogy” is based on Plato’s description of the Good in Rep. VI. In accordance with the Timaeus, Celsus believes that God created “immortal things” and turned the creation of “mortal things” over to them. According to him, the universe has a providential organization in which humans hold no special place, and its history is one of eternally repeating sequences of events separated by catastrophes.

Centro per la filosofia italiana – the title is telling. A centro is like a a ‘centre,’ but Oxford would not have a ‘centre.’ – It’s more of a ‘new-world’ thing – Center for Advanced Studies, say. A centro is like a ‘circle,’ as in the Vienna Circcle. This ‘centro’ is not for philosophical research, but for Italian philosophy simpliciter.

certum: While Grice plays with ‘certum,’ he is happier with UNcertum. To be certain is to have dis-cerned. Oddly, Grice ‘evolved’ from an interest in the certainty and incorrigibility that ‘ordinary’ and the first-person gives to situations of ‘conversational improbability’ and indeterminate implicatura under conditions of ceteris paribus risk and uncertainty in survival. “To be certain that p” is for Grice one of those ‘diaphanous’ verbs. While it is best to improve Descartes’s fuzzy lexicon – and apply ‘certus’ to the emissor, if Grice is asked, “What are you certain of?,” “I have to answer, ‘p’”.  certum: certitude, from ecclesiastical medieval Roman “certitudo,” designating in particular Christian conviction, is heir to two meanings of “certum,” one objective and the other subjective: beyond doubt, fixed, positive, real, regarding a thing or knowledge, or firm in his resolutions, decided, sure, authentic, regarding an individual. Although certitudo has no Grecian equivalent, the Roman verb “cernere,” (cf. discern), from which “certum” is derived, has the concrete meaning of pass through a sieve, discern, like the Grecian “ϰρίνειν,” select, sieve, judge, which comes from the same root. Thus begins the relationship between certitude, judgment, and truth, which since Descartes has been connected with the problematics of the subject and of self-certainty. The whole terminological system of truth is thus involved, from unveiling and adequation to certitude and obviousness. Then there’s Certainty, Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Linguistic Systems  The objective aspect manifests itself first, “certitudo” translating e. g.  the determined nature of objects or known properties as the commentaries on Aristotle’s Met. translated into Roman, or the incontestably true nature of principles. With the revolution of the subject inaugurated by Cartesian Phil. , the second aspect comes to the fore: some reasons, ideas, or propositions are true and certain, or true and evident, but the most certain and the most evident of all, and thus in a sense the truest, is the certitude of my own existence, a certainty that the subject attributes to itself: The thematics of certainty precedes that of consciousness both historically and logically, but it ends up being incorporated and subordinated by it. Certainty thus becomes a quality or disposition of the subject that reproduces, in the field of rational knowledge, the security or assurance that the believer finds in religious faith, and that shields him from the wavering of the soul. It will be noted that Fr.  retains the possibility of reversing the perspective by exploiting the Roman etymology, as Descartes does in the Principles of Phil.  when he transforms the certitudo probabilis of the Scholastics Aquinas into moral certainty. On the other hand, Eng. tends to objectify “certainty” to the maximum in opposition to belief v. BELIEF, whereas G.  hears in “Gewissheit” the root “wissen,” to know, to have learned and situates it in a series with Bewusstsein and Gewissen, clearly marking the constitutive relationship to the subject in opposition to Glaube on the one hand, and to Wahrheit and Wahrscheinlichkeit lit., appearance of truth, i.e., probability on the other. Then there’s Knots of Problems  On the relations between certainty and belief, the modalities of subjective experience. On the relation between individual certainty and the wise man’s constancy. On the relations between certainty and truth, the confrontation between subjectivity and objectivity in the development of knowledge. On the relations between certainty and probability, the modalities of objective knowledge insofar as it is related to a subject’s experience.  uncertainty. This is Grice’s principle of uncertainty. One of Grice’s problem is with ‘know’ and ‘certainty.’ He grants that we only know that 2 + 2 = 4. He often identifies ‘knowledge’ with ‘certainty.’ He does not explore a cancellation like, “I am certain but I do not know.” The reason being that he defends common sense against the sceptic, and so his attitude towards certainty has to be very careful. The second problem is that he wants ‘certainty’ to deal within the desiderative realm. To do that, he divides an act of intending into two: an act of accepting and act of willing. The ‘certainty’ is found otiose if the intender is seen as ‘willing that p’ and accepting that the willing will be the cause for the desideratum to obtain.  n WoW:141, Grice proposes that ‘A is certain that p’ ENTAILS either ‘A is certain that he is certain that p, OR AT LEAST that it is not the case that A is UNCERTAIN that A is certain that p.” ‘Certainly,’ appears to apply to utterances in the credibility and the desirability realm. Grice sometimes uses ‘to be sure.’ He notoriously wants to distinguish it from ‘know.’ Grice explores the topic of incorrigibility and ends up with corrigibility which almost makes a Popperian out of him. In the end, its all about the converational implciata and conversation as rational co-operation. Why does P2 should judge that P1 is being more or less certain about what he is talking? Theres a rationale for that. Our conversation does not consist of idle remarks. Grices example: "The Chairman of the British Academy has a corkscrew in his pocket. Urmsons example: "The king is visiting Oxford tomorrow. Why? Oh, for no reason at all. As a philosophical psychologist, and an empiricist with realist tendencies, Grice was obsessed with what he called (in a nod to the Kiparskys) the factivity of know. Surely, Grices preferred collocation, unlike surely Ryles, is "Grice knows that p." Grice has no problem in seeing this as involving three clauses: First, p. Second, Grice believes that p, and third, p causes Grices belief. No mention of certainty. This is the neo-Prichardian in Grice, from having been a neo-Stoutian (Stout was obsessed, as a few Oxonians like Hampshire and Hart were, with certainty). If the three-prong analysis of know applies to the doxastic, Grices two-prong analysis of intending in ‘Intention and UNcertainty,’ again purposively avoiding certainty, covers the buletic realm. This does not mean that Grice, however proud he was of his ignorance of the history of philosophy (He held it as a badge of honour, his tuteee Strawson recalls), had read some of the philosophical classics to realise that certainty had been an obsession of what Ryle abusively (as he himself puts it) called Descartes and the Establishments "official doctrine"! While ps true in Grices analysis of know is harmless enough, there obviously is no correlate for ps truth in the buletic case. Grices example is Grice intending to scratch his head, via his willing that Grice scratches his head in t2. In this case, as he notes, the doxastic eleent involves the uniformity of nature, and ones more or less relying that if Grice had a head to be scratched in t1, he will have a head to be sratched in t2, when his intention actually GETS satisfied, or fulfilled. Grice was never worried about buletic satisfaction. As the intentionalist that Suppes showed us Grice was, Grice is very much happy to say that if Smith intends to give Joness a job, the facct as to whether Jones actually gets the job is totally irrelevant for most philosophical purposes. He gets more serious when he is happier with privileged access than incorrigibility in “Method.” But he is less strict than Austin. For Austin, "That is a finch implies that the utterer KNOWS its a finch. While Grice has a maxim, do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence (Gettiers analysandum)  and a super-maxim, try to make your contribution one that is true,  the very phrasing highlights Grices cavalier to this! Imagine Kant turning on his grave. "Try!?". Grice is very clever in having try in the super-maxim, and a prohibition as the maxim, involving falsehood avoidance, "Do not say what you believe to be false." Even here he is cavalier. "Cf. "Do not say what you KNOW to be false." If Gettier were wrong, the combo of maxims yields, "Say what you KNOW," say what you are certain about! Enough for Sextus Empiricus having one single maxim: "Either utter a phenomenalist utterance, a question or an order, or keep your mouth shut!." (cf. Grice, "My lips are sealed," as cooperative or helfpul in ways -- "At least he is not lying."). Hampshire, in the course of some recent remarks,l advances the view that self-prediction is (logically) impossible. When I say I know that I shall do X (as against, e.g., X will happen to me, or You will do X), I am not contemplating myself, as I might someone else, and giving tongue to a conjecture about myself and my future acts, as I might be doing about someone else or about the behaviour ofan animal -for that would be tantamount (if I understand him rightly) to looking upon myself from outside, as it were, and treating my own acts as mere caused events. In saying that I know that I shall do X, I am, on this view, saying that I have decided to do X: for to predict that I shall in certain circumstances in fact do X or decide to do X, with no reference to whether or not I have already decided to do it - to say I can tell you now that I shall in fact act in manner X, although I am, as a matter of fact, determined to do the very opposite - does not make sense. Any man who says I know myself too well to believe that, whatever I now decide, I shall do anything other than X when the circumstances actually arise is in fact, if I interpret Hampshires views correctly, saying that he does not really, i.e. seriously, propose to set himself against doing X, that he does not propose even to try to act otherwise, that he has in fact decided to let events take their course. For no man who has truly decided to try to avoid X can, in good faith, predict his own failure to act as he has decided. He may fail to avoid X, and he may predict this; but he cannot both decide to try to avoid X and predict that he will not even try to do this; for he can always try; and he knows this: he knows that this is what distinguishes him from non-human creatures in nature. To say that he will fail even to try is tantamount to saying that he has decided not to try. In this sense I know means I have decided and (Murdoch, Hampshire, Gardiner and Pears, Freedom and Knowledge, in Pears, Freedom and the Will) cannot in principle be predictive. That, if I have understood it, is Hampshires position, and I have a good deal of sympathy with it, for I can see that self-prediction is often an evasive way of disclaiming responsibility for difficult decisions, while deciding in fact to let events take their course, disguising this by attributing responsibility for what occurs to my own allegedly unalterable nature. But I agree with Hampshires critics in the debate, whom I take to be maintaining that, although the situation he describes may often occur, yet circumstances may exist in which it is possible for me both to say that I am, at this moment, resolved not to do X, and at the same time to predict that I shall do X, because I am not hopeful that, when the time comes, I shall in fact even so much as try to resist doing X. I can, in effect, say I know myself well. When the crisis comes, do not rely on me to help you. I may well run away; although I am at this moment genuinely resolved not to be cowardly and to do all I can to stay at your side. My prediction that my resolution will not in fact hold up is based on knowledge of my own character, and not on my present state of mind; my prophecy is not a symptom of bad faith (for I am not, at this moment, vacillating) but, on the contrary, of good faith, of a wish to face the facts. I assure you in all sincerity that my present intention is to be brave and resist. Yet you would run a great risk if you relied too much on my present decision; it would not be fair to conceal my past failures of nerve from you. I can say this about others, despite the most sincere resolutions on their part, for I can foretell how in fact they will behave; they can equally predict this about me. Despite Hampshires plausible and tempting argument, I believe that such objective self-knowledge is possible and occur. From Descartes to Stout and back. Stout indeed uses both intention and certainty, and in the same paragraph. Stout notes that, at the outset, performance falls far short of intention. Only a certain s. of contractions of certain muscles, in proper proportions and in a proper order, is capable of realising the end aimed at, with the maximum of rapidity and certainty, and the minimum of obstruction and failure, and corresponding effort. At the outset of the process of acquisition, muscles are contracted which are superfluous, and which therefore operate as disturbing conditions. Grices immediate trigger, however, is Ayer on sure that, and having the right to be sure, as his immediate trigger later will be Hampshire and Hart. Grice had high regard for Hampshires brilliant Thought and action.  He was also concerned with Stouts rather hasty UNphilosophical, but more scientifically psychologically-oriented remarks about assurance in practical concerns. He knew too that he was exploring an item of the philosophers lexicon (certus) that had been brought to the forum when Anscombe and von Wright translate Witters German expression Gewißheit in Über Gewißheit as Certainty. The Grecians were never sure about being sure. But the modernist turn brought by Descartes meant that Grice now had to deal with incorrigibility and privileged access to this or that P, notably himself (When I intend to go, I dont have to observe myself, Im on the stage, not in the audience, or Only I can say I will to London, expressing my intention to do so. If you say, you will go you are expressing yours! Grice found Descartes very funny ‒ in a French way. Grice is interested in contesting Ayer and other Oxford philosophers, on the topic of a criterion for certainty. In so doing, Grice choses Descartess time-honoured criterion of clarity and distinction, as applied to perception.  Grice does NOT quote Descartes in French! In the proceedings, Grice distinguishes between two kinds of certainty apparently ignored by Descartes: (a) objective certainty: Ordinary-language variant: It is certain that p, whatever it refers to, cf. Grice, it is an illusion; what is it? (b) Subjective certainty: Ordinary-language variant: I am certain that p. I being, of course, Grice, in my bestest days, of course! There are further items on Descartes in the Grice Collection, notably in the last s. of topics arranged alphabetically. Grice never cared to publish his views on Descartes until he found an opportunity to do so when compiling his WOW. Grice is not interested in an exegesis of Descartess thought. He doesnt care to give a reference to any edition of Descartess oeuvre. But he plays with certain. It is certain that p is objective certainty, apparently. I am certain that p is Subjectsive certainty, rather. Oddly, Grice will turn to UNcertainty as it connects with intention in his BA lecture. Grices interest in Descartes connects with Descartess search for a criterion of certainty in terms of clarity and distinction of this or that perception.  Having explored the philosophy of perception with Warnock, its only natural he wanted to give Descartess rambles a second and third look! Descartes on clear and distinct perception, in WOW, II semantics and metaphysics, essay, Descartes on clear and distinct perception and Malcom on dreaming, perception, Descartes, clear and distinct perception, Malcolm, dreaming. Descartes meets Malcolm, and vice versa.  Descartes on clear and distinct perception, in WOW, Descartes on clear and distinct perception, Descartes on clear and distinct perception, in WOW, part II, semantics and metaphysics, essay. Grice gives a short overview of Cartesian metaphysics for the BBC 3rd programme. The best example, Grice thinks, of a metaphysical snob is provided by Descartes, about whose idea of certainty Grice had philosophised quite a bit, since it is in total contrast with Moore’s. Descartes is a very scientifically minded philosopher, with very clear ideas about the proper direction for science.  Descartes, whose middle Names seems to have been Euclid, thinks that mathematics, and in particular geometry, provides the model for a scientific procedure, or method. And this determines all of Descartess thinking in two ways. First, Descartes thinks that the fundamental method in science is the axiomatic deductive method of geometry, and this Descartes conceives (as Spinoza morality more geometrico) of as rigorous reasoning from a self-evident axiom (Cogito, ergo sum.). Second, Descartes thinks that the Subjects matter of physical science, from mechanics to medicine, must be fundamentally the same as the Subjects matter of geometry! The only characteristics that the objects studied by geometry poses are spatial characteristics. So from the point of view of science in general, the only important features of things in the physical world were also their spatial characteristics, what he called extensio, res extensa. Physical science in general is a kind of dynamic, or kinetic, geometry.   Here we have an exclusive preference for a certain type of scientific method, and a certain type of scientific explanation: the method is deductive, the type of explanation mechanical. These beliefs about the right way to do science are exactly reflected in Descartess ontology, one of the two branches of metaphysics; the other is philosophical eschatology, or the study of categories), and it is reflected in his doctrine, that is, about what really exists.  Apart from God, the divine substance, Descartes recognises just two kinds of substance, two types of real entity. First, there is material substance, or matter; and the belief that the only scientifically important characteristics of things in the physical world are their spatial characteristics goes over, in the language of metaphysics, into the doctrine that these are their only characteristics. Second, and to Ryle’s horror, Descartes recognizes the mind or soul, or the mental substance, of which the essential characteristic is thinking; and thinking itself, in its pure form at least, is conceived of as simply the intuitive grasping of   this or that self-evident axiom and this or that of its deductive consequence. These restrictive doctrines about reality and knowledge naturally call for adjustments elsewhere in our ordinary scheme of things. With the help of the divine substance, these are duly provided.  It is not always obvious that the metaphysicians scheme involves this kind of ontological preference, or favoritism, or prejudice, or snobbery this tendency, that is, to promote one or two categories of entity to the rank of the real, or of the ultimately real, to the exclusion of others, Descartess entia realissima. One is taught at Oxford that epistemology begins with the Moderns such as Descartes, which is not true. Grice was concerned with “certain,” which was applied in Old Roman times to this or that utterer: the person who is made certain in reference to a thing, certain, sure. Lewis and Short have a few quotes: “certi sumus periisse omnia;” “num quid nunc es certior?,” “posteritatis, i. e. of posthumous fame,” “sententiæ,” “judicii,” “certus de suā geniturā;” “damnationis;” “exitii,” “spei,” “matrimonii,” “certi sumus;” in the phrase “certiorem facere aliquem;” “de aliquā re, alicujus rei, with a foll, acc. and inf., with a rel.-clause or absol.;” “to inform, apprise one of a thing: me certiorem face: “ut nos facias certiores,” “uti Cæsarem de his rebus certiorem faciant;” “qui certiorem me sui consilii fecit;” “Cæsarem certiorem faciunt, sese non facile ab oppidis vim hostium prohibere;” “faciam te certiorem quid egerim;” with subj. only, “milites certiores facit, paulisper intermitterent proelium,” pass., “quod crebro certior per me fias de omnibus rebus,” “Cæsar certior factus est, tres jam copiarum partes Helvetios id flumen transduxisse;” “factus certior, quæ res gererentur,” “non consulibus certioribus factis,” also in posit., though rarely; “fac me certum quid tibi est;” “lacrimæ suorum tam subitæ matrem certam fecere ruinæ,” uncertainty, Grice loved the OED, and its entry for will was his favourite. But he first had a look to shall. For Grice, "I shall climb Mt. Everest," is surely a prediction. And then Grice turns to the auxiliary he prefers, will. Davidson, Intending, R. Grandy and Warner, PGRICE. “Uncertainty,” “Aspects.” “Conception,” Davidson on intending, intending and trying, Brandeis.”Method,” in “Conception,” WOW . Hampshire and Hart. Decision, intention, and certainty, Mind, Harman, Willing and intending in PGRICE. Practical reasoning. Review of Met.  29. Thought, Princeton, for functionalist approach alla Grice’s “Method.” Principles of reasoning. Rational action and the extent of intention. Social theory and practice. Jeffrey, Probability kinematics, in The logic of decision, cited by Harman in PGRICE. Kahneman and Tversky, Judgement under uncertainty, Science, cited by Harman in PGRICE. Nisbet and Ross, Human inference, cited by Harman in PGRICE. Pears, Predicting and deciding. Prichard, Acting, willing, and desiring, in Moral obligations, Oxford ed. by Urmson  Speranza, The Grice Circle Wants You. Stout, Voluntary action. Mind 5, repr in Studies in philosophy and psychology, Macmillan, cited by Grice, “Uncertainty.” Urmson, ‘Introduction’ to Prichard’s ‘Moral obligations.’ I shant but Im not certain I wont – Grice. How uncertain can Grice be? This is the Henriette Herz BA lecture, and as such published in The Proceedings of the BA. Grice calls himself a neo-Prichardian (after the Oxford philosopher) and cares to quote from a few other philosophers  ‒ some of whom he was not necessarily associated with: such as Kenny and Anscombe, and some of whom he was, notably Pears. Grices motto: Where there is a neo-Prichardian willing, there is a palæo-Griceian way! Grice quotes Pears, of Christ Church, as the philosopher he found especially congenial to explore areas in what both called philosophical psychology, notably the tricky use of intending as displayed by a few philosophers even in their own circle, such as Hampshire and Hart in Intention, decision, and certainty. The title of Grices lecture is meant to provoke that pair of Oxonian philosophers Grice knew so well and who were too ready to bring in certainty in an area that requires deep philosophical exploration. This is the Henriette Herz Trust annual lecture. It means its delivered annually by different philosophers, not always Grice! Grice had been appointed a FBA earlier, but he took his time to deliver his lecture. With your lecture, you implicate, Hi! Grice, and indeed Pears, were motivated by Hampshires and Harts essay on intention and certainty in Mind. Grice knew Hampshire well, and had actually enjoyed his Thought and Action. He preferred Hampshires Thought and action to Anscombes Intention. Trust Oxford being what it is that TWO volumes on intending are published in the same year! Which one shall I read first? Eventually, neither ‒ immediately. Rather, Grice managed to unearth some sketchy notes by Prichard (he calls himself a neo-Prichardian) that Urmson had made available for the Clarendon Press ‒ notably Prichards essay on willing that. Only a Corpus-Christi genius like Prichard will distinguish will to, almost unnecessary, from will that, so crucial. For Grice, wills that , unlike  wills to, is properly generic, in that p, that follows the that-clause, need NOT refer to the Subjects of the sentence. Surely I can will that Smith wins the match! But Grice also quotes Anscombe (whom otherwise would not count, although they did share a discussion panel at the American Philosophical Association) and Kenny, besides Pears. Of Anscombe, Grice borrows (but never returns) the direction-of-fit term of art, actually Austinian. From Kenny, Grice borrows (and returns) the concept of voliting. His most congenial approach was Pearss. Grice had of course occasion to explore disposition and intention on earlier occasions. Grice is especially concerned with a dispositional analysis to intending. He will later reject it in “Uncertainty.” But that was Grice for you! Grice is especially interested in distinguishing his views from Ryles over-estimated dispositional account of intention, which Grice sees as reductionist, and indeed eliminationist, if not boringly behaviourist, even in analytic key. The logic of dispositions is tricky, as Grice will later explore in connection with rationality, rational propension or propensity, and metaphysics, the as if operator). While Grice focuses on uncertainty, he is trying to be funny. He knew that Oxonians like Hart and Hampshire were obsessed with certainty. I was so surprised that Hampshire and Hart were claiming decision and intention are psychological states about which the agent is certain, that I decided on the spot that that could certainly be a nice topic for my BA lecture! Grice granted that in some cases, a declaration of an intention can be authorative in a certain certain way, i. e. as implicating certainty. But Grice wants us to consider: Marmaduke Bloggs intends to climb Mt. Everest. Surely he cant be certain hell succeed. Grice used the same example at the APA, of all places. To amuse Grice, Davidson, who was present, said: Surely thats just an implicaturum! Just?! Grice was almost furious in his British guarded sort of way. Surely not just! Pears, who was also present, tried to reconcile: If I may, Davidson, I think Grice would take it that, if certainty is implicated, the whole thing becomes too social to be true.  They kept discussing implicaturum versus entailment. Is certainty entailed then? Cf. Urmson on certainly vs. knowingly, and believably. Davidson asked. No, disimplicated! is Grices curt reply. The next day, he explained to Davidson that he had invented the concept of disimplicaturum just to tease him, and just one night before, while musing in the hotel room! Talk of uncertainty was thus for Grice intimately associated with his concern about the misuse of know to mean certain, especially in the exegeses that Malcolm made popular about, of all people, Moore! V. Scepticism and common sense and Moore and philosophers paradoxes above, and Causal theory and Prolegomena for a summary of Malcoms misunderstanding Moore! Grice manages to quote from Stouts Voluntary action and Brecht. And he notes that not all speakers are as sensitive as they should be (e.g. distinguishing modes, as realised by shall vs. will). He emphasizes the fact that Prichard has to be given great credit for seeing that the accurate specification of willing should be willing that and not willing to. Grice is especially interested in proving Stoutians (like Hampshire and Hart) wrong by drawing from Aristotles prohairesis-doxa distinction, or in his parlance, the buletic-doxastic distinction. Grice quotes from Aristotle. Prohairesis cannot be opinion/doxa. For opinion is thought to relate to all kinds of things, no less to eternal things and impossible things than to things in our own power; and it is distinguished by its falsity or truth, not by its badness or goodness, while choice is distinguished rather by these. Now with opinion in general perhaps no one even says it is identical. But it is not identical even with any kind of opinion; for by choosing or deciding, or prohairesis, what is good or bad we are men of a certain character, which we are not by holding this or that opinion or doxa. And we choose to get or avoid something good or bad, but we have opinions about what a thing is or whom it is good for or how it is good for him; we can hardly be said to opine to get or avoid anything. And choice is praised for being related to the right object rather than for being rightly related to it, opinion for being truly related to its object. And we choose what we best know to be good, but we opine what we do not quite know; and it is not the same people that are thought to make the best choices and to have the best opinions, but some are thought to have fairly good opinions, but by reason of vice to choose what they should not. If opinion precedes choice or accompanies it, that makes no difference; for it is not this that we are considering, but whether it is identical with some kind of opinion. What, then, or what kind of thing is it, since it is none of the things we have mentioned? It seems to be voluntary, but not all that is voluntary to be an object of choice. Is it, then, what has been decided on by previous deliberation? At any rate choice involves a rational principle and thought. Even the Names seems to suggest that it is what is chosen before other things. His final analysis of G intends that p is in terms of, B1, a buletic condition, to the effect that G wills that p, and D2, an attending doxastic condition, to the effect that G judges that B1 causes p. Grice ends this essay with a nod to Pears and an open point about the justifiability (other than evidential) for the acceptability of the agents deciding and intending versus the evidential justifiability of the agents predicting that what he intends will be satisfied. It is important to note that in his earlier Disposition and intention, Grice dedicates the first part to counterfactual if general. This is a logical point. Then as an account for a psychological souly concept ψ. If G does A, sensory input, G does B, behavioural output. No ψ without the behavioural output that ψ is meant to explain. His problem is with the first person. The functionalist I does not need a black box. The  here would be both incorrigibility and privileged access. Pology only explains their evolutionary import. Certum -- Certainty: cf. H. P. Grice, “Intention and uncertainty.” the property of being certain, which is either a psychological property of persons or an epistemic feature of proposition-like objects e.g., beliefs, utterances, statements. We can say that a person, S, is psychologically certain that p where ‘p’ stands for a proposition provided S has no doubt whatsoever that p is true. Thus, a person can be certain regardless of the degree of epistemic warrant for a proposition. In general, philosophers have not found this an interesting property to explore. The exception is Peter Unger, who argued for skepticism, claiming that 1 psychological certainty is required for knowledge and 2 no person is ever certain of anything or hardly anything. As applied to propositions, ‘certain’ has no univocal use. For example, some authors e.g., Chisholm may hold that a proposition is epistemically certain provided no proposition is more warranted than it. Given that account, it is possible that a proposition is certain, yet there are legitimate reasons for doubting it just as long as there are equally good grounds for doubting every equally warranted proposition. Other philosophers have adopted a Cartesian account of certainty in which a proposition is epistemically certain provided it is warranted and there are no legitimate grounds whatsoever for doubting it. Both Chisholm’s and the Cartesian characterizations of epistemic certainty can be employed to provide a basis for skepticism. If knowledge entails certainty, then it can be argued that very little, if anything, is known. For, the argument continues, only tautologies or propositions like ‘I exist’ or ‘I have beliefs’ are such that either nothing is more warranted or there are absolutely no grounds for doubt. Thus, hardly anything is known. Most philosophers have responded either by denying that ‘certainty’ is an absolute term, i.e., admitting of no degrees, or by denying that knowledge requires certainty Dewey, Chisholm, Vitters, and Lehrer. Others have agreed that knowledge does entail absolute certainty, but have argued that absolute certainty is possible e.g., Moore. Sometimes ‘certain’ is modified by other expressions, as in ‘morally certain’ or ‘metaphysically certain’ or ‘logically certain’. Once again, there is no universally accepted account of these terms. Typically, however, they are used to indicate degrees of warrant for a proposition, and often that degree of warrant is taken to be a function of the type of proposition under consideration. For example, the proposition that smoking causes cancer is morally certain provided its warrant is sufficient to justify acting as though it were true. The evidence for such a proposition may, of necessity, depend upon recognizing particular features of the world. On the other hand, in order for a proposition, say that every event has a cause, to be metaphysically certain, the evidence for it must not depend upon recognizing particular features of the world but rather upon recognizing what must be true in order for our world to be the kind of world it is  i.e., one having causal connections. Finally, a proposition, say that every effect has a cause, may be logically certain if it is derivable from “truths of logic” that do not depend in any way upon recognizing anything about our world. Since other taxonomies for these terms are employed by philosophers, it is crucial to examine the use of the terms in their contexts.  Refs.: The main source is his BA lecture on ‘uncertainty,’ but using the keyword ‘certainty’ is useful too. His essay on Descartes in WoW is important, and sources elsehere in the Grice Papers, such as the predecessor to the “Uncertainty” lecture in “Disposition and intention,” also his discussion of avowal (vide references above), incorrigibility and privileged access in “Method,” repr. in “Conception,” BANC

character, mid-14c., carecter, "symbol marked or branded on the body;" mid-15c., "symbol or drawing used in sorcery;" late 15c., "alphabetic letter, graphic symbol standing for a sound or syllable;" from Old French caratere "feature, character" (13c., Modern French caractère), from Latin character, from Greek kharaktēr "engraved mark," also "symbol or imprint on the soul," properly "instrument for marking," from kharassein "to engrave," from kharax "pointed stake," a word of uncertain etymology which Beekes considers "most probably Pre-Greek."  The Latin ch- spelling was restored from 1500s.  The meaning of Greek kharaktēr was extended in Hellenistic times by metaphor to "a defining quality, individual feature." In English, the meaning "sum of qualities that define a person or thing and distinguish it from another" is from 1640s. That of "moral qualities assigned to a person by repute" is from 1712.  You remember Eponina, who kept her husband alive in an underground cavern so devotedly and heroically? The force of character she showed in keeping up his spirits would have been used to hide a lover from her husband if they had been living quietly in Rome. Strong characters need strong nourishment. [Stendhal "de l'Amour," 1822]  Sense of "person in a play or novel" is first attested 1660s, in reference to the "defining qualities" he or she is given by the author. Meaning "a person" in the abstract is from 1749; especially "eccentric person" (1773). Colloquial sense of "chap, fellow" is from 1931. Character-actor, one who specializes in characters with marked peculiarities, is attested from 1861; character-assassination is from 1888; character-building (n.) from 1886. -- the comprehensive set of ethical and intellectual dispositions of a person. Intellectual virtues  like carefulness in the evaluation of evidence  promote, for one, the practice of seeking truth. Moral or ethical virtues  including traits like courage and generosity  dispose persons not only to choices and actions but also to attitudes and emotions. Such dispositions are generally considered relatively stable and responsive to reasons. Appraisal of character transcends direct evaluation of particular actions in favor of examination of some set of virtues or the admirable human life as a whole. On some views this admirable life grounds the goodness of particular actions. This suggests seeking guidance from role models, and their practices, rather than relying exclusively on rules. Role models will, at times, simply perceive the salient features of a situation and act accordingly. Being guided by role models requires some recognition of just who should be a role model. One may act out of character, since dispositions do not automatically produce particular actions in specific cases. One may also have a conflicted character if the virtues one’s character comprises contain internal tensions between, say, tendencies to impartiality and to friendship. The importance of formative education to the building of character introduces some good fortune into the acquisition of character. One can have a good character with a disagreeable personality or have a fine personality with a bad character because personality is not typically a normative notion, whereas character is. 

charron: p., H. P. Grice, “Do not multiply truths beyond necessity.” theologian who became the principal expositor of Montaigne’s ideas, presenting them in didactic form. His first work, The Three Truths 1595, presented a negative argument for Catholicism by offering a skeptical challenge to atheism, nonChristian religions, and Calvinism. He argued that we cannot know or understand God because of His infinitude and the weakness of our faculties. We can have no good reasons for rejecting Christianity or Catholicism. Therefore, we should accept it on faith alone. His second work, On Wisdom 1603, is a systematic presentation of Pyrrhonian skepticism coupled with a fideistic defense of Catholicism. The skepticism of Montaigne and the Grecian skeptics is used to show that we cannot know anything unless God reveals it to us. This is followed by offering an ethics to live by, an undogmatic version of Stoicism. This is the first modern presentation of a morality apart from any religious considerations. Charron’s On Wisdom was extremely popular in France and England. It was read and used by many philosophers and theologians during the seventeenth century. Some claimed that his skepticism opened his defense of Catholicism to question, and suggested that he was insincere in his fideism. He was defended by important figures in the  Catholic church. 

chiliagon: referred to by Grice in “Some remarks about the senses.’ In geometry, a chiliagon, or 1000-gon is a polygon with 1,000 sides. Philosophers commonly refer to chiliagons to illustrate ideas about the nature and workings of thought, meaning, and mental representation. A chiliagon is a regular chiliagon Polygon 1000.svg A regular chiliagon Type Regular polygon Edges and vertices 1000 Schläfli symbol {1000}, t{500}, tt{250}, ttt{125} Coxeter diagram CDel node 1.pngCDel 10.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel node.png CDel node 1.pngCDel 5.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel 0x.pngCDel node 1.png Symmetry group Dihedral (D1000), order 2×1000 Internal angle (degrees) 179.64° Dual polygon Self Properties Convex, cyclic, equilateral, isogonal, isotoxal  A whole regular chiliagon is not visually discernible from a circle. The lower section is a portion of a regular chiliagon, 200 times as large as the smaller one, with the vertices highlighted. In geometry, a chiliagon (/ˈkɪliəɡɒn/) or 1000-gon is a polygon with 1,000 sides. Philosophers commonly refer to chiliagons to illustrate ideas about the nature and workings of thought, meaning, and mental representation.   Contents 1 Regular chiliagon 2 Philosophical application 3 Symmetry 4 Chiliagram 5 See also 6 References Regular chiliagon A regular chiliagon is represented by Schläfli symbol {1,000} and can be constructed as a truncated 500-gon, t{500}, or a twice-truncated 250-gon, tt{250}, or a thrice-truncated 125-gon, ttt{125}.  The measure of each internal angle in a regular chiliagon is 179.64°. The area of a regular chiliagon with sides of length a is given by  {\displaystyle A=250a^{2}\cot {\frac {\pi }{1000}}\simeq 79577.2\,a^{2}}A=250a^{2}\cot {\frac  {\pi }{1000}}\simeq 79577.2\,a^{2} This result differs from the area of its circumscribed circle by less than 4 parts per million.  Because 1,000 = 23 × 53, the number of sides is neither a product of distinct Fermat primes nor a power of two. Thus the regular chiliagon is not a constructible polygon. Indeed, it is not even constructible with the use of neusis or an angle trisector, as the number of sides is neither a product of distinct Pierpont primes, nor a product of powers of two and three.  Philosophical application René Descartes uses the chiliagon as an example in his Sixth Meditation to demonstrate the difference between pure intellection and imagination. He says that, when one thinks of a chiliagon, he "does not imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present" before him – as he does when one imagines a triangle, for example. The imagination constructs a "confused representation," which is no different from that which it constructs of a myriagon (a polygon with ten thousand sides). However, he does clearly understand what a chiliagon is, just as he understands what a triangle is, and he is able to distinguish it from a myriagon. Therefore, the intellect is not dependent on imagination, Descartes claims, as it is able to entertain clear and distinct ideas when imagination is unable to. Philosopher Pierre Gassendi, a contemporary of Descartes, was critical of this interpretation, believing that while Descartes could imagine a chiliagon, he could not understand it: one could "perceive that the word 'chiliagon' signifies a figure with a thousand angles [but] that is just the meaning of the term, and it does not follow that you understand the thousand angles of the figure any better than you imagine them." The example of a chiliagon is also referenced by other philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant. David Hume points out that it is "impossible for the eye to determine the angles of a chiliagon to be equal to 1996 right angles, or make any conjecture, that approaches this proportion."[4] Gottfried Leibniz comments on a use of the chiliagon by John Locke, noting that one can have an idea of the polygon without having an image of it, and thus distinguishing ideas from images. Henri Poincaré uses the chiliagon as evidence that "intuition is not necessarily founded on the evidence of the senses" because "we can not represent to ourselves a chiliagon, and yet we reason by intuition on polygons in general, which include the chiliagon as a particular case."  Inspired by Descartes's chiliagon example, Grice, R. M. Chisholm and other 20th-century philosophers have used similar examples to make similar points. Chisholm's ‘speckled hen,’ which need not have a determinate number of speckles to be successfully imagined, is perhaps the most famous of these. Symmetry  The symmetries of a regular chiliagon. Light blue lines show subgroups of index 2. The 4 boxed subgraphs are positionally related by index 5 subgroups. The regular chiliagon has Dih1000 dihedral symmetry, order 2000, represented by 1,000 lines of reflection. Dih100 has 15 dihedral subgroups: Dih500, Dih250, Dih125, Dih200, Dih100, Dih50, Dih25, Dih40, Dih20, Dih10, Dih5, Dih8, Dih4, Dih2, and Dih1. It also has 16 more cyclic symmetries as subgroups: Z1000, Z500, Z250, Z125, Z200, Z100, Z50, Z25, Z40, Z20, Z10, Z5, Z8, Z4, Z2, and Z1, with Zn representing π/n radian rotational symmetry.  John Conway labels these lower symmetries with a letter and order of the symmetry follows the letter.[8] He gives d (diagonal) with mirror lines through vertices, p with mirror lines through edges (perpendicular), i with mirror lines through both vertices and edges, and g for rotational symmetry. a1 labels no symmetry.  These lower symmetries allow degrees of freedom in defining irregular chiliagons. Only the g1000 subgroup has no degrees of freedom but can be seen as directed edges.  Chiliagram A chiliagram is a 1,000-sided star polygon. There are 199 regular forms[9] given by Schläfli symbols of the form {1000/n}, where n is an integer between 2 and 500 that is coprime to 1,000. There are also 300 regular star figures in the remaining cases.  For example, the regular {1000/499} star polygon is constructed by 1000 nearly radial edges. Each star vertex has an internal angle of 0.36 degrees.[10]  {1000/499} Star polygon 1000-499.svg Star polygon 1000-499 center.png Central area with moiré patterns See also Myriagon Megagon Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Language References  Meditation VI by Descartes (English translation).  Sepkoski, David (2005). "Nominalism and constructivism in seventeenth-century mathematical philosophy". Historia Mathematica. 32: 33–59. doi:10.1016/j.hm.2003.09.002.  Immanuel Kant, "On a Discovery," trans. Henry Allison, in Theoretical Philosophy After 1791, ed. Henry Allison and Peter Heath, Cambridge UP, 2002 [Akademie 8:121]. Kant does not actually use a chiliagon as his example, instead using a 96-sided figure, but he is responding to the same question raised by Descartes.  David Hume, The Philosophical Works of David Hume, Volume 1, Black and Tait, 1826, p. 101.  Jonathan Francis Bennett (2001), Learning from Six Philosophers: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198250924, p. 53.  Henri Poincaré (1900) "Intuition and Logic in Mathematics" in William Bragg Ewald (ed) From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, 2007, ISBN 0198505361, p. 1015.  Roderick Chisholm, "The Problem of the Speckled Hen", Mind 51 (1942): pp. 368–373. "These problems are all descendants of Descartes's 'chiliagon' argument in the sixth of his Meditations" (Joseph Heath, Following the Rules: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint, Oxford: OUP, 2008, p. 305, note 15).  The Symmetries of Things, Chapter 20  199 = 500 cases − 1 (convex) − 100 (multiples of 5) − 250 (multiples of 2) + 50 (multiples of 2 and 5)  0.36 = 180 (1 - 2 /(1000 / 499) ) = 180 ( 1 – 998 / 1000 ) = 180 ( 2 / 1000 ) = 180 / 500 chiliagon vte Polygons (List) Triangles Acute Equilateral Ideal IsoscelesObtuseRight Quadrilaterals Antiparallelogram Bicentric CyclicEquidiagonalEx-tangentialHarmonic Isosceles trapezoidKiteLambertOrthodiagonal Parallelogram Rectangle Right kite Rhombus Saccheri SquareTangentialTangential trapezoidTrapezoid By number of sides Monogon (1) Digon (2) Triangle (3) Quadrilateral (4) Pentagon (5) Hexagon (6) Heptagon (7) Octagon (8) Nonagon (Enneagon, 9) Decagon (10) Hendecagon (11) Dodecagon (12) Tridecagon (13) Tetradecagon (14) Pentadecagon (15) Hexadecagon (16) Heptadecagon (17) Octadecagon (18) Enneadecagon (19)Icosagon (20)Icosihenagon [de] (21)Icosidigon (22) Icositetragon (24) Icosihexagon (26) Icosioctagon (28) Triacontagon (30) Triacontadigon (32) Triacontatetragon (34) Tetracontagon (40) Tetracontadigon (42)Tetracontaoctagon (48)Pentacontagon (50) Pentacontahenagon [de] (51) Hexacontagon (60) Hexacontatetragon (64) Heptacontagon (70)Octacontagon (80) Enneacontagon (90) Enneacontahexagon (96) Hectogon (100) 120-gon257-gon360-gonChiliagon (1000) Myriagon (10000) 65537-gonMegagon (1000000) 4294967295-gon [ru; de]Apeirogon (∞) Star polygons Pentagram Hexagram Heptagram Octagram Enneagram Decagram Hendecagram Dodecagram Classes Concave Convex Cyclic Equiangular Equilateral Isogonal Isotoxal Pseudotriangle Regular Simple SkewStar-shaped Tangential Categories: Polygons1000 (number).

choice, v. rational choice. choice sequence, a variety of infinite sequence introduced by L. E. J. Brouwer to express the non-classical properties of the continuum the set of real numbers within intuitionism. A choice sequence is determined by a finite initial segment together with a “rule” for continuing the sequence. The rule, however, may allow some freedom in choosing each subsequent element. Thus the sequence might start with the rational numbers 0 and then ½, and the rule might require the n ! 1st element to be some rational number within ½n of the nth choice, without any further restriction. The sequence of rationals thus generated must converge to a real number, r. But r’s definition leaves open its exact location in the continuum. Speaking intuitionistically, r violates the classical law of trichotomy: given any pair of real numbers e.g., r and ½, the first is either less than, equal to, or greater than the second. From the 0s Brouwer got this non-classical effect without appealing to the apparently nonmathematical notion of free choice. Instead he used sequences generated by the activity of an idealized mathematician the creating subject, together with propositions that he took to be undecided. Given such a proposition, P  e.g. Fermat’s last theorem that for n  2 there is no general method of finding triplets of numbers with the property that the sum of each of the first two raised to the nth power is equal to the result of raising the third to the nth power or Goldbach’s conjecture that every even number is the sum of two prime numbers  we can modify the definition of r: The n ! 1st element is ½ if at the nth stage of research P remains undecided. That element and all its successors are ½ ! ½n if by that stage P is proved; they are ½ † ½n if P is refuted. Since he held that there is an endless supply of such propositions, Brouwer believed that we can always use this method to refute classical laws. In the early 0s Stephen Kleene and Richard Vesley reproduced some main parts of Brouwer’s theory of the continuum in a formal system based on Kleene’s earlier recursion-theoretic interpretation of intuitionism and of choice sequences. At about the same time  but in a different and occasionally incompatible vein  Saul Kripke formally captured the power of Brouwer’s counterexamples without recourse to recursive functions and without invoking either the creating subject or the notion of free choice. Subsequently Georg Kreisel, A. N. Troelstra, Dirk Van Dalen, and others produced formal systems that analyze Brouwer’s basic assumptions about open-futured objects like choice sequences. 

Church’s thesis, thesis, proposed by A. Church at a meeting of the  Mathematical Society “that the notion of an effectively calculable function of positive integers should be identified with that of a recursive function. . . .” This proposal has been called Church’s thesis since Kleene uses that name in his Introduction to Metamathematics. The informal notion of an effectively calculable function effective procedure, or algorithm had been used in mathematics and logic to indicate that a class of problems is solvable in a “mechanical fashion” by following fixed elementary rules. Underlying epistemological concerns came to the fore when modern logic moved in the late nineteenth century from axiomatic to formal presentations of theories. Hilbert suggested in 4 that such formally presented theories be taken as objects of mathematical study, and metamathematics has been pursued vigorously and systematically since the 0s. In its pursuit, concrete issues arose that required for their resolution a delimitation of the class of effective procedures. Hilbert’s important Entscheidungsproblem, the decision problem for predicate logic, was one such issue. It was solved negatively by Church and Turing  relative to the precise notion of recursiveness; the result was obtained independently by Church and Turing, but is usually called Church’s theorem. A second significant issue was the general formulation of the incompleteness theorems as applying to all formal theories satisfying the usual representability and derivability conditions, not just to specific formal systems like that of Principia Mathematica. According to Kleene, Church proposed in 3 the identification of effective calculability with l-definability. That proposal was not published at the time, but in 4 Church mentioned it in conversation to Gödel, who judged it to be “thoroughly unsatisfactory.” In his Princeton Lectures of 4, Gödel defined the concept of a recursive function, but he was not convinced that all effectively calculable functions would fall under it. The proof of the equivalence between l-definability and recursiveness by Church and Kleene led to Church’s first published formulation of the thesis as quoted above. The thesis was reiterated in Church’s “An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory” 6. Turing introduced, in “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” 6, a notion of computability by machines and maintained that it captures effective calculability exactly. Post’s paper “Finite Combinatory Processes, Formulation 1” 6 contains a model of computation that is strikingly similar to Turing’s. However, Post did not provide any analysis; he suggested considering the identification of effective calculability with his concept as a working hypothesis that should be verified by investigating ever wider formulations and reducing them to his basic formulation. The classic papers of Gödel, Church, Turing, Post, and Kleene are all reprinted in Davis, ed., The Undecidable, 5. In his 6 paper Church gave one central reason for the proposed identification, namely that other plausible explications of the informal notion lead to mathematical concepts weaker than or equivalent to recursiveness. Two paradigmatic explications, calculability of a function via algorithms or in a logic, were considered by Church. In either case, the steps taken in determining function values have to be effective; and if the effectiveness of steps is, as Church put it, interpreted to mean recursiveness, then the function is recursive. The fundamental interpretative difficulty in Church’s “step-by-step argument” which was turned into one of the “recursiveness conditions” Hilbert and Bernays used in their 9 characterization of functions that can be evaluated according to rules was bypassed by Turing. Analyzing human mechanical computations, Turing was led to finiteness conditions that are motivated by the human computer’s sensory limitations, but are ultimately based on memory limitations. Then he showed that any function calculable by a human computer satisfying these conditions is also computable by one of his machines. Both Church and Gödel found Turing’s analysis convincing; indeed, Church wrote in a 7 review of Turing’s paper that Turing’s notion makes “the identification with effectiveness in the ordinary not explicitly defined sense evident immediately.” This reflective work of partly philosophical and partly mathematical character provides one of the fundamental notions in mathematical logic. Indeed, its proper understanding is crucial for judging the philosophical significance of central metamathematical results  like Gödel’s incompleteness theorems or Church’s theorem. The work is also crucial for computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive psychology, providing in these fields a basic theoretical notion. For example, Church’s thesis is the cornerstone for Newell and Simon’s delimitation of the class of physical symbol systems, i.e. universal machines with a particular architecture; see Newell’s Physical Symbol Systems 0. Newell views the delimitation “as the most fundamental contribution of artificial intelligence and computer science to the joint enterprise of cognitive science.” In a turn that had been taken by Turing in “Intelligent Machinery” 8 and “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” 0, Newell points out the basic role physical symbol systems take on in the study of the human mind: “the hypothesis is that humans are instances of physical symbol systems, and, by virtue of this, mind enters into the physical universe. . . . this hypothesis sets the terms on which we search for a scientific theory of mind.”